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| Tristan Hambleton (from artist's website) |
British barihunk Tristan Hambleton will join Oxford Lieder on February 16th for a performance of Schubert's
Schwanengesang. Although not intended by the composer as a cycle, it is a collection of the composer's very last songs that sit together perfectly and have formed a core work of the song repertoire.
Hambleton graduated from the Royal Academy of Music Opera School in 2015 and has performed for Glyndebourne Opera, Nevill Holt Opera, Welsh National Opera and The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, as well as at Bridegwater Hall, Birmingham Symphony Hall, Wigmore Hall, the Auditorium de Bordeaux and the Concertgebouw Amsterdam.
Tickets are £10 and are available online (and includes coffee and cake).
The songs of Schwanengesang, in the composer's original order, are:
* By Ludwig Rellstab:
o Liebesbotschaft ("Message of love"; the singer invites a stream to convey a message to his beloved)
o Kriegers Ahnung ("Warrior's foreboding"; a soldier encamped with his comrades sings of how he misses his beloved)
o Frühlingssehnsucht ("Longing in spring": the singer is surrounded by
natural beauty but feels melancholy and unsatisfied until his beloved
can "free the spring in my breast")
o Ständchen (Serenade)
o Aufenthalt ("Dwelling place": the singer is consumed by anguish for
reasons we aren't told, and likens his feelings to the river, forest and
mountain around him)
o In der Ferne ("In the distance": the singer has fled his home,
broken-hearted, and complains of having no friends and no home; he asks
the breezes and sunbeams to convey his greetings to the one who broke
his heart)
o Abschied ("Farewell": the singer bids a cheery but determined farewell
to a town where he has been happy but which he must now leave)
* By Heinrich Heine:
o Der Atlas ("Atlas": the singer, having wished for eternal happiness or
eternal wretchedness, has the latter, and blames himself for the weight
of sorrow, as heavy as the world, that he now bears)
o Ihr Bild ("Her image": the singer tells his beloved of how he dreamed
(daydreamed?) that a portrait of her favoured him with a smile and a
tear; but alas, he has lost her)
o Das Fischermädchen ("The fisher-maiden": the singer tries to
sweet-talk a fishing girl into a romantic encounter, drawing parallels
between his heart and the sea)
o Die Stadt ("The city": the singer is in a boat rowing towards the city
where he lost the one he loved; it comes foggily into view)
o Am Meer ("By the sea": the singer tells of how he and his beloved met
in silence beside the sea, and she wept; since then he has been consumed
with longing — she has poisoned him with her tears)
o Der Doppelgänger ("The double": the singer looks at the house where
his beloved once lived, and is horrified to see someone standing outside
it in torment — it is, or appears to be, none other than himself, aping
his misery of long ago)
* The last song based on a poem written by Johann Gabriel Seidl (1804 - 1875).
o Taubenpost ("Pigeon post"; the song that is often considered as a last
lied that Schubert ever wrote. The song is included into a cycle by the
first editor and is almost always included in modern performances)
