Dichterliebe
It's all far too close to the bone but such wonderful music.

I have to tell 17 and 18 year-olds about it and about Winterreise tomorrow. I just don't really know how it's going to turn out. Hopefully there won't be any  but apparently that's happened in previous years when another member of staff taught this lecture.

The thing is with Dichterliebe, if that piano epilogue creeps up on you at the wrong right moment, there's simply no hope for you, is there? It says 'I've loved being with you and I really don't want to leave yet, no, not yet, please, just a little longer...' Heartbreaking!

Charles Ives - Piano Sonata No. 2 "Concord, Mass. 1840-1860"

Played by René Eckhardt with Eleonore Pameijer, flute

It's the flower music though isn't it? We've already heard it at the end of Am leuchtenden Sommermorgen. Just after the words "sei unsrer Schwester nicht böse, du trauriger, blasser Mann". For me that's the resolution it's pointing to...

(Which is perhaps worth comparing with the end of the Kerner-Lieder: "...mich heilt kein Kraut der Flur, und aus dem Traum, dem bangen, weckt micht ein Engel nur." Seems you can either have the flowers or the girl. )

Incidentally I can never suppress a little pang of regret when pianists halve the speed for those three V-13 cadences in the two last full bars. Or when they play the grace notes in the postlude at the speed of the quavers. Or when they extend the cadence at the end of Ich grolle nicht as though the song ended with a change to 3/8.

Picky, I know.

After weeks of waiting, HMV finally delivered:

Too sugary for me.

Not what's been spinning but what Ollie has been clunking out accompanied by his own crooning (or is it the other way round?): the last three of the Schumann Kerner-Lieder op. 35. As I mentioned on the Good Night Thread this is very much worthy of your attention if you've been wallowing too long in Dichterliebe-induced gloom. The shift from the C major of Stille Thränen into the Ab major of "Wer machte dich so krank?", and then almost the same music to two different texts for the last two songs, but a completely plain accompaniment with no storms or hand-wringing. Might be my favourite Schumann cycle and certainly a good candidate for Most Unfairly Neglected.

But you won't hear the key shift I mentioned on any recording I know. As I may have mentioned before, Stille Thränen is usually transposed down quite a distance because it's so high and the other songs are left as they are. It's not unusual to hear all the last three songs in the same key. Which is already an annoyance in itself but since Schumann actually composed a brief modulatory passage even some of the best recordings have a brief moment of musical nonsense: instead of slipping sideways to a reasonably distant key they introduce a completely alien chord only to modulate back to the key they were already in.

Duffers.