Classical Music | Soprano

Recorded on 04/15/2009, uploaded on 05/25/2009

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Rachmaninoff’s second set of songs, composed around 1893, followed only a year after his first. Each of the texts used are translations made by Alexei Plesheyev: four of them come from two of Germany’s greatest poets, Heine and Goethe; the other two are by the Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko. The first two songs are based on Heine texts. The first, “Water Lily,” is a brief two stanza poem of love between the water lilies of the lake and the bright moon above. Rachmaninoff’s setting opens and closes with a delicate but sprightly passage for the piano—the blooming of the lilies as they greet the moon. In contrast, the vocal melody is lyrical and expressive. The second, “My Child, Your Beauty is that of a Flower,” is a charming song on a heartwarming text of the parental love for a child. The music Rachmaninoff provides for Heine’s text is warm and affectionate.

The first of the two songs on Shevchenko texts, “Brooding,” embodies a struggle against futility. The gloomy and ruminating mind of the poet is given a declamatory and dramatic utterance in Rachmaninoff’s setting, building to a powerful climax that inevitably fades into the songs quiet and unsettled close. “I Fell in Love, to My Sorrow,” follows and is the sorrowful cry of a woman separated from her beloved who has been called away by “powerful people” to be a lifelong soldier. The voice utters its doleful melody atop a dismal piano accompaniment, eventually only able to utter long melismatic sighs by the song’s end.

The fifth song, “A Dream,” is based on another Heine text and is considered the best of the set. The poet speaks of fond remembrances of his homeland, but to him they are now only dreams. Despite its brief length, vocal melody and accompaniment alike are finely wrought and draw forth a wealth of feeling from Heine’s short poem. Lastly, “A Prayer,” the sole Goethe text, is a young woman’s ardent plea of forgiveness after she learns of the miserable death of a man whose love she had rejected. Rachmaninoff gives Goethe’s poem a particularly dramatic and stern treatment, though there are subtle touches of tenderness present in the moment the young woman recollects the fire of the man’s love. From the song’s powerful climax, the music recedes as the penitent utters her final plea, and the song closes with a sense of hope and forgiveness with three warm major chords.      Joseph DuBose

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.