Programme & Tickets

"How I stirred myself in the night, in the night, and led myself away ...": Brahms' song collection op. 32 on a text by August von Platen begins with these brooding words, the singing voice proceeds slowly, the piano accompaniment outlines a gloomy scenario sparingly, almost haltingly. This cycle is rarely performed, although it outlines almost the entire expressive cosmos of Brahms' song oeuvre in nine songs.

Konstantin Krimmel, who can rightly be described as a rising star in the serious baritone repertoire—winner of the Opera Awards’ Best Young Artist prize, a finalist in the Heidelberg Frühling Wettbewerb "Das Lied", and named Young Singer of the Year by the trade journal *Opernwelt*— a BBC New Generation Artist, and a singer who has long since reached the pinnacle of the art song world, begins his program of Brahms songs with this piece. It remains the only song from this collection, Op. 32, included here; the rest of the selection, however, captures the existential mood of Platen’s settings, as in “Auf dem Kirchhofe.”

Brahms concludes the programme, which begins with songs by Liszt, including “Freudvoll und leidvoll,” which, based on Goethe’s famous text, sings of the lover’s feverish mood swings between “exulting to the heavens, sorrowful to the point of death.” This is followed by a rarity: a selection from the “Romanian Songs,” Op. 7, by Eusebius Mandyczewski, an Austrian musicologist and composer of Romanian descent. He composed over 200 Romanian folk songs and first met Brahms in 1879; the two later became friends. With Mandyczewski’s folk songs, Konstantin Krimmel pays homage to his own German-Romanian roots.

Concert without an intermission