A Chorus of Nightingales
Re-composing Robert Schumann´s Dichterliebe for soprano and orchestra
January 13, 2024 Helsingborg concert hall
Tora Augestad – soprano,
Simon Gaudenz– conductor
Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra
A CHORUS OF NIGHTINGALES
Re-composing Robert Schumann’s Dichterliebe
Art develops through reflection of and upon preceding art, where “reflection” signifies both a “mirroring” and a “re-thinking.”
— George Steiner: Real Presences
In theatre, the classics are reactivated every time they are staged. Ibsen, Strindberg, Shakespeare, etc. A contemporary production of Peer Gynt is usually quite far removed from Ibsen’s original. Text is added, material is removed, the order of scenes is changed, and so on. This is the kind of updating we are accustomed to in theatre. It is done in order to make the work contemporary, and to help us understand the core of the plays as we read them today.
But what about classical music after the Baroque period? One might well say that every performance of a classical work is an interpretation, but not in the same way we experience interpretation in theatre. These interpretations do not change the order of movements, add new material, or cut away sections. There has been a lack of radical interpretative traditions in post-Baroque classical music—traditions that seek a re-reading of the classics comparable to that found in theatre. There are, of course, many exceptions. One important exception is the German composer and conductor Hans Zender and his composed interpretations of classical works. Examples include his interpretations of Franz Schubert’s Winterreise and Schumannfantasie, in which Zender composes further for orchestra based on material from Robert Schumann’s piano works. Likewise, his orchestration of Debussy’s piano music allows us to hear Debussy’s music anew.
Musicologist Håvard Enge writes:
Zender regards this opportunity to experience connections across music history as a source of enrichment for our relationship to classical music. At the same time, however, he argues that we far too rarely take this freedom seriously. Our lexical familiarity with music history more often leads to ossified listening. World-weary and wise after the fact, we nod knowingly at material that was once innovative—perhaps even shocking—in its own time.
The point of departure for this project, commissioned by the Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra, is composed interpretations of eight of Robert Schumann’s Dichterliebe songs. The first version was written by Henrik Hellstenius for the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra in March 2015. In 2022, a version for soprano with the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra and Tora Augestad was released on the album Past and Presence, for which Hellstenius received the Norwegian Spellemann Prize.
Working with Robert Schumann’s music proved to be a successful combination of Tora Augestad’s unique sonic signature and distinctive sense of timing, and Henrik Hellstenius’s compositional work with the orchestra. The result is a symphonic fantasy on Schumann’s songs that forms an arc and a coherent whole in a long, through-composed, almost music-dramatic trajectory. Hellstenius shares Zender’s point of departure—a new look at old material—but with Hellstenius the dramatic aspect is taken further. The emotional power of the songs is intensified by the work’s dramaturgy: the interplay between Hellstenius’s newly composed orchestral music and Schumann’s songs, which are surrounded by entirely new timbres and harmonies. At times it is raw and violent; at other times tender and transparent.
The work unfolds as a through-composed alternation between newly written music and versions of Schumann’s songs, and part of its tension lies in its large-scale form. Hellstenius wishes to stretch Schumann’s material far, allowing himself to be inspired to continue composing and orchestrating on the textual, harmonic, melodic, and gestural elements of this magnificent music—giving it a gaze, and an ear, from our own time.
I. Prelude
II. Die Rose, die Lilie, die Taube, die Sonne
III. Ich will meine Seele tauchen
IV. Ich grolle nicht
V. Im wunderschönen Monat Mai
VI. Aus meinen Tränen sprießen
VII. Und wüssten’s die Blumen, die kleinen
VIII. Das ist ein Flöten und Geigen
IX. Hör’ ich das Liedchen klingen
X. Interlude
XI. Ich hab’ im Traum geweinet
