Mulled wine made by our host,Glenn, for a Liederabend in the intimate atmosphere of the 1901 Arts Club in Waterloo.

Jakob Schad and Parvis Hejazi Dreaming of Love with Echoes of Loss. Schumann’s Dichterliebe and Brahms Neun Lieder und Gesänge with a duo united as one, as magical sounds wafted around this beautiful candlelit salon with passionate intensity and poetic poignancy.

Jakob Schad’s superb voice need not fear having the piano lid wide open because not only does he have the power but also his pianist has the sensibility to blend together in the recreation of one of Schumann’s greatest song cycles.It was the equal mastery of both that was able to convey the deeply personal message in Heine’s poetry. Sometimes music can speak louder than words and after the poignant message of the voice it was the piano of Parvis that concluded and had the last ‘word’.

Nowhere more than in the final bars for solo piano with which this song cycle ends. Parvis hardly looking at the score as he was able to continue the poignant beauty of Jakob’s voice and add deeply expressive meaning with playing of ravishing beauty.

Brahms was much more for Jacob’s magnificently expressive voice where Parvis’s was more orchestral than pianistic with sumptuous rich sounds just sustaining Jacob’s powerful voice. After such an intense and refined evening of superb music making the audience that had been listening so attentively managed to persuade these two young artists to sing just one more lied before adjourning upstairs to the bar.

Dichterliebe, A Poet’s Love (composed 1840), Robert Schumann op 48). The texts for its 16 songs come from the Lyrisches Intermezzo by Heinrich Heine, written in 1822–23 and published as part of Heine’s Das Buch der Lieder. Though Schumann originally set 20 songs to Heine’s poems, only 16 of the 20 were included in the first edition. Dein Angesicht (Heine no. 5) is one of the omitted items. Auf Flügeln des Gesanges, On Wings of Song (Heine no 9), is best known from a setting by Mendelssohn. The introduction to the first song, Im wunderschönen Monat Mai, is a direct quote from Clara Wieck- Schumann’s piano Concerto in A minor (1835}

Songs

(The synopses here are made from the Heine texts.)

1. Im wunderschönen Monat Mai (Heine, Lyrical Intermezzo no 1). (“In beautiful May, when the buds sprang, love sprang up in my heart: in beautiful May, when the birds all sang, I told you my desire and longing.”)
2. Aus meinen Tränen sprießen (Heine no 2). (“Many flowers spring up from my tears, and a nightingale choir from my sighs: If you love me, I’ll pick them all for you, and the nightingale will sing at your window.”)
3. Die Rose, die Lilie, die Taube, die Sonne (Heine no 3). (“I used to love the rose, lily, dove and sun, joyfully: now I love only the little, the fine, the pure, the One: you yourself are the source of them all.”)
4. Wenn ich in deine Augen seh (Heine no 4). (“When I look in your eyes all my pain and woe fades: when I kiss your mouth I become whole: when I recline on your breast I am filled with heavenly joy: and when you say, ‘I love you’, I weep bitterly.”)
5. Ich will meine Seele tauchen (Heine no 7). (“I want to bathe my soul in the chalice of the lily, and the lily, ringing, will breathe a song of my beloved. The song will tremble and quiver, like the kiss of her mouth which in a wondrous moment she gave me.”)
6. Im Rhein, im heiligen Strome (Heine no 11). (“In the Rhine, in the sacred stream, great holy Cologne with its great cathedral is reflected. In it there is a face painted on golden leather, which has shone into the confusion of my life. Flowers and cherubs float about Our Lady: the eyes, lips and cheeks are just like those of my beloved.”)
7. Ich grolle nicht (Heine no 18). (“I do not chide you, though my heart breaks, love ever lost to me! Though you shine in a field of diamonds, no ray falls into your heart’s darkness. I have long known it: I saw the night in your heart, I saw the serpent that devours it: I saw, my love, how empty you are.”)
8. Und wüßten’s die Blumen, die kleinen (Heine no 22). (“If the little flowers only knew how deeply my heart is wounded, they would weep with me to heal my suffering, and the nightingales would sing to cheer me, and even the starlets would drop from the sky to speak consolation to me: but they can’t know, for only One knows, and it is she that has torn my heart asunder.”)
9. Das ist ein Flöten und Geigen (Heine no 20). (“There is a blaring of flutes and violins and trumpets, for they are dancing the wedding-dance of my best-beloved. There is a thunder and booming of kettle-drums and shawms. In between, you can hear the good cupids sobbing and moaning.”)
10. Hör’ ich das Liedchen klingen (Heine no 40). (“When I hear that song which my love once sang, my breast bursts with wild affliction. Dark longing drives me to the forest hills, where my too-great woe pours out in tears.”)
11. Ein Jüngling liebt ein Mädchen (Heine no 39). (“A youth loved a maiden who chose another: the other loved another girl, and married her. The maiden married, from spite, the first and best man that she met with: the youth was sickened at it. It’s the old story, and it’s always new: and the one whom she turns aside, she breaks his heart in two.”)
12. Am leuchtenden Sommermorgen (Heine no 45). (“On a sunny summer morning I went out into the garden: the flowers were talking and whispering, but I was silent. They looked at me with pity, and said, ‘Don’t be cruel to our sister, you sad, death-pale man.'”)
13. Ich hab’ im Traum geweinet (Heine no 55). (“I wept in my dream, for I dreamt you were in your grave: I woke, and tears ran down my cheeks. I wept in my dreams, thinking you had abandoned me: I woke, and cried long and bitterly. I wept in my dream, dreaming you were still good to me: I woke, and even then my floods of tears poured forth.”)
14. Allnächtlich im Traume (Heine no 56). (“I see you every night in dreams, and see you greet me friendly, and crying out loudly I throw myself at your sweet feet. You look at me sorrowfully and shake your fair head: from your eyes trickle the pearly tear-drops. You say a gentle word to me and give me a sprig of cypress: I awake, and the sprig is gone, and I have forgotten what the word was.”)
15. Aus alten Märchen winkt es (Heine no 43). “(The old fairy tales tell of a magic land where great flowers shine in the golden evening light, where trees speak and sing like a choir, and springs make music to dance to, and songs of love are sung such as you have never heard, till wondrous sweet longing infatuates you! Oh, could I only go there, and free my heart, and let go of all pain, and be blessed! Ah! I often see that land of joys in dreams: then comes the morning sun, and it vanishes like smoke.”)
16. Die alten, bösen Lieder (Heine no 65). (“The old bad songs, and the angry, bitter dreams, let us now bury them, bring a large coffin. I shall put very much therein, I shall not yet say what: the coffin must be bigger than the great tun at Heidelberg. And bring a bier of stout, thick planks, they must be longer than the Bridge at Mainz. And bring me too twelve giants, who must be mightier than the Saint Christopher  in the cathedral at Cologne. They must carry away the coffin and throw it in the sea, because a coffin that large needs a large grave to put it in. Do you know why the coffin must be so big and heavy? I will put both my love and my suffering into it.”)

There is a strong case for thinking of Brahms’ Neun Lieder und Gesänge op 32 as a kind of latter-day Dichterliebe, or rather Komponistenliebe. The composer’s self-identification with the nine songs of Op 32, which feature lost love, isolation, nostalgia and amorous self abasement Aand his careful selection and dovetailing of five Platen settings and four Daumer, is very much a personal statement. 

Parvis Hejazi at St Mary’s Perivale ‘Mastery and courage of a young artist’

Parvis Hejazi in recital in London July 2022