大象传媒

Christian Gerhaher, one of the most admired singers performing today, is joined by a string ensemble led by internationally renowned violinist Isabelle Faust in a concert exploring the night as a time for introspection, anxiety and love...

The programme pivots on Schoenberg's 1899 masterpiece for string sextet, Verkl盲rte Nacht (Transfigured Night), a tense single-movement tone poem based on a Richard Dehmel poem where a man and a woman walk through a moonlit forest. Othmar Schoeck is a composer long-championed by Christian Gerhaher and Schoeck's 1930s Notturno for baritone and string quartet inhabits an expressive world close to Verkl盲rte Nacht. The introspective and intense setting of nine poems by Nikolaus Lenau, including a final text by Gottfried Keller, is regarded as one of the Swiss composer's greatest song cycles. In Les nuits d'茅t茅 Berlioz sets five poems by his friend Th茅ophile Gautier. The sequence, whose texts are from the male point of view, is more usually heard sung by a woman's voice but it will be a treat indeed to hear them performed by one of the great singers of our time in David Matthews's remarkable arrangement, commissioned by Gerhaher himself.

Othmar Schoeck: Notturno Op. 47

8.20pm
Interval music: Brahms's autumnal Intermezzos Op.117 and Schoenberg's Ein Stelldichein (A Rendezvous), written a decade before Verkl盲rte Nacht and also inspired by a poem of Richard Dehmel.

c. 8.40pm
Arnold Schoenberg: Verkl盲rte Nacht Op. 4
Hector Berlioz (arr. David Matthews for string sextet): Les nuits d'茅t茅 Op. 7

Christian Gerhaher (baritone)
Isabelle Faust & Anne Katharina Schreiber (violins)
Timothy Ridout & Danusha Waskiewicz (violas)
Jean-Guihen Queyras & Christian Polt茅ra (cellos)

Photo credit: Gregor Hohenberg/Sony Classical