Joan Rodgers, soprano -Stephan Genz, baritone- Roger Vignoles, pianist
Sunday November 6, 2005, 7:30 pm

Joan Rodgers & Stephan Genz will bring Wolf’s Mörike-Lieder to life in the Terrace Theater in a rare program presented in the United States through a special initiative of the Vocal Arts Society.

From her debut at the 1982 Aix-en-Provence Festival to her acclaimed 2005 Moscow song recital, Joan Rodgers has sung regularly with the principal opera companies, the leading orchestras and in prestigious recital halls around the world. She received the Royal Philharmonic Society award as Singer of the Year for 1997 and was created a Commander of the British Empire in the 2001.

International attention came to Stephan Genz with awards at such prestigious competitions as the International Johannes Brahms Competition in Hamburg and the International Hugo Wolf Competition in Stuttgart. He has appeared in opera in Berlin, Paris, Milan, and Dresden, and in recital throughout the Americas as well as Europe. His lieder recordings have earned some of the industry's highest honors, including the Diapason d’Or, Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik, and the Gramphone Award.

Notes on the Program

Hugo Wolf’s settings of poems by Eduard Mörike (1804-1875) represent the first full flowering of his 250 or so songs that we acknowledge today as the composer’s legacy.  In February 1888, shortly before his 28th birthday, the settings began to pour forth in a sudden flood of inspiration.  The writings of the South German pastor had been known to Wolf nearly ten years earlier (possibly through Schumann’s settings of five Mörike poems), and he had composed the endearing Mausfallensprüchlein in 1882.  But now in the dead of winter, housed outside Vienna in a friend’s apartment, he seemed to be actually inhabiting Mörike’s clothes and walking in his footsteps.  The music flowed from his pen, sometimes two or three songs in a day.

One can only speculate about this unexplained surge in Wolf’s creative impulse.  Perhaps the impact of his father’s death in May 1887 finally released the floodwaters.  Philipp Wolf, himself a frustrated musician, had reluctantly accepted his gifted young son’s ambitions to become a composer, but died bitter and disappointed before his struggling offspring’s work achieved any recognition.  Hugo, who had pleaded for his father’s support, was devastated.  In any event by November of 1888, a scant 42 days after the surge began, the German lieder repertoire had gained 53 new songs, peerless in their poetic settings and unprecedented in their concisely integrated musical realizations.

As a performer I find this collection the most appealing of all Wolf’s songbooks.  The lyric verses of the South German poet evoked countless graphic images near and dear to Wolf’s heart.  His response was spontaneous and vivid.  The five volumes in the original Peters edition contain an array of enticingly colorful pieces from which to select a full-length concert program for the male and/or female singer.  Pianists, too, take special delight in the Mörike treasure chest and the challenging duo of a Wolf song.

Tonight, in a representative sampling of these treasures, we are treated to the fairy-tale charms of Elfenlied, Nixe Binsefuss, Der Knabe und das Immlein, and Lied vom Winde. In contrast to these fanciful flights are the torturous unrequited love of Lebe wohl and Das verlassene Mägdlein, and the struggling spirituality expressed in Wo find ich Trost and Denk es, o Seele.
 
We can’t help smiling at the breathless, mischievous innocence of young love in Erstes Liebeslied and Begegnung, or the serious plight of the sleepless young lad in Lied eines Verliebten.  The healing power of springtime is vibrantly present, at first in the jubilant Er ist’s, then in the languorous Im Frühling.  Wolf and Mörike also shared an exuberant love of the outdoors and nature (Fussreise and Auf einer Wanderung).  In the composer’s shaping of the musical material in the latter, it becomes a miniature symphonic poem, capturing every tint of color and summer fragrance of the village evening.  It is a favorite of mine and must be counted as one of the crown jewels in the collection.

Wolf’s quaintly charming depiction of Mörike’s timid gardener (Der Gärtner) provides a welcome change from the intense emotions expressed in many songs on tonight’s program; so, too, do the musical vignette of a medieval painting (Auf ein altes Bild) as viewed in the shimmering texture of a modal chorale, and Gebet, a simple, heartfelt prayer that continues to float heavenward in the transcendent postlude.  Also included are the deft Jägerlied, written in 5/4 time, and the arcane Auf einer Christblume, both seldom heard and meticulously crafted in their detail.  The second-mentioned mirrors the poet’s elegy to nature and approaches religious meditation.

The lusty ballad of the disgruntled hunter, Der Jäger, is composed in the style of Loewe, whom Wolf much admired.  Der Feuerreiter, also a ballad, must stand on its own as a dramatic scena, recounting the frenetic ride of an ancient horseman carrying news of burning buildings, then himself finally consumed by the flames.

The closing group of songs tonight offers Verborgenheit, the most familiar of all Wolf’s songs and the first German lied many of us learned as young singers.  Although Wolf himself disclaimed it in later years as not being representative of his writing, it is one of the most beautiful and beloved.  Finally, who can resist Selbstgeständnis and Abschied, witty songs filled with raucous laughter and unmitigated joy at the expense of others.

At the end of such an evening, one reads with some disbelief Wolf’s comments in a letter to Melanie Köchert later in his life:

“………I spent part of the time during the trip reading Mörike’s letters, the first half of which can be said to be weak and fairly uninteresting.  But the other half met with my approval, although I had imagined the letters to be wittier and more original.  A certain antiquated tone is all too prominent in them.  We ‘moderns’ have a different sensibility.  I suspect we (Mörike and I) would not have gotten along well after all.”

Louise McClelland Urban