Very interesting programme from Andrés Orozco-Estrada and Hr-sinfonieorchester Frankfurt - Schubert and Wolfgang Rihm. Schubert Symphony no 2 and the Unvollende, with Rihm's Das Rot song cyle and six songs from Schwanengesang. Listen HERE. Perhaps not so unusual, though if you consider that Rihm was setting the poems of Karoline von Günderrode 1780-1806). Von Günderrode was one of the earliest Romantic poets who adapted the revolutionary ethic of the period to develop what we'd now recognize as radical feminist ideas. Her poems and letters were written a whole generation before the Brontë sisters : indeed she was long dead before they were even born.
Though poor, background was aristoctratic and intellectual. Learning was her escape from the mundane restraints of women in society at that time. Like so many thinkers of her time she was fascinated by the margins of Europe - the "East" and the far north west, Nordic lands and Scotland representing uncivilized freedom where the unconscious could operate without convention. She also made the most of the passion of the time for writing literary letters which dealt with intellectual concepts. These sorts of letters weren't just personal, but were discusssed in salons and sometimes published in book form. A useful outlet for women, whose chances of being taken seriously were limited. Uncowed, she wrote “Masculinity and femininity, as they are usually understood, are obstacles to humanity.” In a letter to Gunda von Brentano she writes: “I’ve often had the unfeminine desire to throw myself into the wild chaos of battle and die. Why didn’t I turn out to be a man! I have no feeling for feminine virtues, for a woman’s happiness. Only that which is wild, great, shining appeals to me. There is an unfortunate but unalterable imbalance in my soul; and it will and must remain so, since I am a woman and have desires like a man without a man’s strength. That’s why I’m so vacillating and so out of harmony with myself….” (read more here and here)
In Das Rot : Sechs Gedichte der Karoline von Günderrode, from 1990, Wolfgang Rihm addresses the epigrammatic nature of the texts, letting the poet speak for herself. The first song "Hochrot" comprises just eight lines:
Du innig Roth,
Bis an den Tod
Soll meine Lieb
Dir gleichen,
Soll nimmer bleichen,
Bis an den Tod,
Du glühende Roth,
Soll sie Dir gleichen.
(You, inward red dawn, until death should my life be like you, never fading,you glowing Redness , ever true.)
Thus the minimal piano line (Ulrich Eisenlohr) and restrained declamation in the voice part. A short pause before the last line, which rises high up the scale. Clear traces of the influence of Rihm's teacher, Wilhelm Rihm, and specifically of Killmayer's Hölderlin-Zyklusen. Making the connection between Hölderlin and Von Günderrode is valid. Both were way ahead of their time, more in tune with ours, in many ways. The text for the second song "Ist alles stumm und leer" is strophic, Günderrode employing images like scents, distant sounds, fragile flowers. But in the last verse, something wilder emegeges.Prégardien's voices lowers, grows richer. "Phönix der Lieblichkeit,
Dich trägt dein Fittig weit
Hin zu der Sonne Strahl,
Ach was ist dir zumal
Mein einsam Leid!" (Phoenix of loveliness, your wings carry you far up towards the sun) Thoughnthe phoenix might ignore the observer, it is an inspiration, for the phoenix flies into flames and is reborn.
"Des Knaben Morgengruß" and "Des Knaben Abendsgruß" are mirror images. Both employ similar images but for different purposes, which Righm reflects by settingbthe first with plangent spareness, the second more forcefully. Again, clear Killmayer influences in the ardent near-staccato rhythms. Thus we're prepared for the wild intensity of "An Creuzer". The redness of dawn becomes the glowing redness of sunset, before it's annihilated in darkness. Rihm's setting is jagged, reflecting the dissonant image in the text : the piano 's last notes dark and foreboding. And so to the strange last song.
Liebst du das Dunkel
auigter Nächte
Graut dir der Morgen
Starrst du ins Spätrot
Seufzest beim Mahle
Stößest den Becher
Weg von den Lippen
Liebst du nicht Jagdlust
Reizet dich Ruhm nicht
Schlachtengetümmel
Welken dir Blumen
Schneller am Busen
Als sie sonst welkten
Drängt sich das Blut dir
Pochend zum Herzen.
(Do you love darkness (ambiguity). Longing for a feast but pushing the wineglass away, passion so strong it wilts flowers and ends in death.).
Günderrode's life seemed full of contradiction : breaking away from conventional role models, yet not finding resolution. She fell in love with a man she could not marry, and killed herself, aged only 26. One wonders if she would have been happy even if she had married? Perhaps for a Romantic, turbulence and tragedy make better art. The Schubert Heine songs with which this interesting concert ended continued the mood of irony. Günderrode would have been (just) old enough to be Schubert's mother but she is in some ways the predecessor of some of his poets like Schulze and Mayrhofer. So it was good hearing Rihm's settings of her work with Schubert's orchestral work.
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