Fanny Clamagirand, violin Vanya Cohen, piano “Nights of the East and West: Mediterranean Sound Poems”

With no fewer than seven hundred Lieder of extraordinary variety, Franz Schubert appears to us as the undisputed master of the German Lied and constitutes the common thread of this program. From his beloved Vienna, which he rarely left, he favored this form of intimacy, embodying the great romantic themes inherited from Goethe, with the infinite tenderness that is his own: the fascination for nature which is a mirror of feelings, travel and wandering, nostalgia mixed with ardent desire for a person or a place often unattainable... This program therefore reveals a sort of history of the German Lied: In Mendelssohn's work, Lieder retain a pure, often strophic form, following the outline of the poem. Liszt, on the other hand, leaves us lieder of rare finesse, a field of experimentation offering the piano the possibility of singing, as much as the voice. This same singing is found in Brahms, which was nevertheless contrasted with the former. Hugo Wolf, who closes this program, brings Lieder writing to a refinement and a fusion of music and poetry rarely equaled. His music, with its extraordinary colors and very free structure, already suggests the great musical upheaval of the Third Viennese School.