The Language of Deepest Desire

Introduction

In Siegfried, Richard Wagner reveals the hero of his Ring. Growing up in the forest, young Siegfried hears the call of the ‘Waldvogel’ (Wood-bird), whose language he learns to speak. It is the language of deepest desire, of humankind’s natural instinct. Guided by the Waldvogel, Siegfried faces one obstacle after another, until he finally reaches his destination: a rock on which rests a human form, surrounded by a magical ring of fire. The shock that passes through Siegfried’s body when he sees a woman for the first time makes him experience two feelings that are new to him: love and fear. The transformative power of love and the hidden message of nature, two themes that are ubiquitous in Richard Wagner’s oeuvre, inspired pianist Inge Spinette to create two separate yet intimately intertwined lied evenings. In Phänomen, soprano Liv Redpath and baritone Samuel Hasselhorn circle each other like two celestial bodies drawn to each other, while in Transfiguration, soprano Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha and bass Franz-Josef Selig try to move towards the impossible fusion of two souls.

Phänomen

Inge Spinette: “Phänomen is shaped like a loop, as it were. It begins with the enigmatic poetry of Eduard Mörike, set to music by Hugo Wolf. Like Wagner, Mörike creates a cosmos imbued with meaning in which birds and plants speak to us and in which the love between two souls transcends the earthly. It is in that enchanted (and enchanting) nature that the lovers awaken to the singing of the Waldvogel. But love also has a worldly, human side: one of attraction and repulsion, adoration and hatred. These feelings are handled with both humour and tact in the Tuscan folk poetry translated by Wolf into German in his Italienisches Liederbuch. Boundless adoration and longing for the beloved (and therefore also the unbearable absence of the beloved) also recur in the songs of Robert Schumann, for instance in ‘Schöne Wiege meiner Leiden’. In Wolf’s song ‘Grenzen der Menschheit’, based on a text by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, humankind is nothing but a small cog in a larger cosmic whole. ‘Phänomen’, also based on a text by Goethe, sheds light on the transcendent, otherworldly nature of love. We have come full circle. So let’s listen to the message of nature, of which we are all a part.”

Transfiguration

Inge Spinette: “Driven by the fierce love he felt for Mathilde Wesendonck, Richard Wagner set five of her poems to music; they later became known as the Wesendonck Lieder. These songs – which Wagner also considered as a preliminary study for Tristan und Isolde – form a unique symbiosis of text and music expressing feelings of longing and powerlessness, driven by the impossibility of being fully absorbed in the other. This thread also connects the songs of Richard Strauss, in which the abyss yawns at the feet of the lonely lover and in which the protagonist seeks the ultimate reunion by being absorbed again in all-encompassing nature. With their striking chromaticism, Hugo Wolf’s Michelangelo Lieder express adoration for the feminine in a manner that is almost Wagnerian. In the footsteps of ‘das ewig Weibliche’ (the eternal feminine), the ideal image of woman appears as an unattainable, soul-lifting ‘Erlöserin’ (saviour). At the same time, for these nineteenth-century artists, woman remains a precious rose – beautiful, but with treacherous thorns. The themes from Michelangelo’s Renaissance poetry bring to mind the poems in the first recital, Phänomen, such as the limits of the human in ‘Alles endet, was entstehet’ and the cosmic, mystical atmosphere of ‘Fühlt meine Seele das ersehnte Licht’. Franz Liszt initially composed his Liebestraüme as three songs highlighting different gradations of love. The last of these songs draws on a poem by Ferdinand Freiligrath. Later, Liszt abandoned all words to sing in his third nocturne of unconditional love purely through music.”

Edited by Lalina Goddard
Translated by Patrick Lennon