‘My heart, what makes you beat so hard? What new and strange life?’ lamented Beethoven in an 1810 letter. The famous tenor Mark Padmore, last heard by La Monnaie’s audiences in an English-language repertoire (Britten and Stravinsky), now appears in a programme of Beethoven and Schumann. Several Beethoven settings of Goethe are followed by the poignant An die ferne Geliebte. Beneath its apparent simplicity and intimacy, the latter piece presents a construction and unity that put it on a par with the repertoire’s masterpieces, winning the admiration of Schumann. At the end of 1840, Schumann found his inspiration waning – a crisis he overcame by composing twelve lieder based on works by Kerner. Here, in the manner of Beethoven, the artist is searching for a soothing spiritual force: ‘Song ringing out from human breasts! If you weren’t there, oh, in these dark times, what would fill the heart with pleasure?’

PROGRAMME

• Ludwig van Beethoven
  Lieder
  An die ferne Geliebte (A.I. Jeitteles), op.98 (1816)
• Robert Schumann
  Zwölf Gedichte von Justinus Kerner. Eine Liederreihe für eine Singstimme mit Pianoforte (“Kerner Lieder”), op.35 (1840)