Songs of Loving and Dying

Since Beethoven it is regarded a standard of musical creation that a composer draws piano songs together into a cycle. Our Brahms program adds a new, unfamiliar variation: solo songs are intertwined with vocal quartets, choirs and piano music.

At the same time, the cycle follows a roughly coherent plot - a plot not founded in the concious plan of the composer but in the hidden mesh of his musical and literary themes: in leading motives of tribulation woven through Johannes Brahms’ vocal work like a red thread.