Virtual Recital Premieres on Valentine's Day

This Sunday I will be airing a virtual recital on entitled “Frauenliebe und Leben: A Virtual Valentine.” The recital airs at 3pm on YouTube at the following link: https://youtu.be/fxDh2_zPvFw.

What you will see is a pre-recorded performance filmed in the living room of my apartment. I did all the video editing and recording myself into what I hope will be an enjoyable viewing experience. In this time when it is so difficult to make live music, it was a remarkably fulfilling project putting this all together.

The recital is predictably love themed to celebrate Valentine’s Day. The centerpiece of the program is Robert Schumann’s song cycle “Frauenliebe und -leben,” a setting of the poetry by Adelbert von Chamisso. This work chronicles multiple stages of love and life as experienced through the eyes of a woman in eight songs. We follow her as she experiences love at first sight, the thrills of early infatuation, anxiety and doubt, affirmation, wedded bliss, lustful extasy, the joys of motherhood, loss and mourning, and finally (in the wordless piano postlude) remembrance.

Although the text and concept may seem dated to today’s audience, it was highly progressive in the mid-nineteenth century in a time when most art, literature and music was focused on the male perspective. And, despite some of the more antiquated ideals or connotations referenced in the cycle, there are also certain universal experiences of love in any person’s life that we as the audience can identify with.

Since Frauenliebe ends on a slightly somber tone, I’ve also added a couple of crowd pleasers at the end of the recital to end things on a happy note (pun intended).

The first of these is the “Habanera” from the Carmen, which, if you don’t recognize it by name, you very likely will once you hear it. The second is Kurt Weill’s “That’s Him” with clever lyrics by Ogden Nash that perfectly balance wittiness with sentimentality.