Vocalise proudly presents Brahms’ Liebeslieder Waltzer and Henze’s The Moralities at the Manoel Theatre on 10 February at 7.30pm.
The Love Waltzes consist of 18 musical settings of texts by Georg Friederich Daumer. The texts speak of courtly love in various moods, some even spoken of with a sense of humour, but essentially speak of a love which is mostly about happiness and beauty. They were written in 1868-69 for SATB and piano for four hands; the women and men are often answering each other, but there are also waltzes for men and women alone, as well as the occasional solo.
There is a great variety in the settings, they never feel repetitive. Brahms uses beautiful different melodies and daring harmonic progressions as well as different rhythms all very descriptive of the moods they are portraying. The popularity of these Liebeslieder Waltzer led to the composition of the Neue Liebeslieder Waltzer, again here all except the last are based on texts by Daumer.
The final setting is by Goethe. Here the texts are more serious, and also speak of an unreturned love; we find a juxtaposition of misery, joy and love. The change in tone of text is apparent in the music, where maybe the idea of the waltz is felt less, to give way to more emotion, and the use of richer romantic harmonies, especially evident in the a cappella moments in the final piece. There are more singing qualities in this final set, again a characteristic of the romantic style of Brahms’ writings.
The Moralities is a youth cantata based on Aesop’s fables, and written on a text by W.H. Auden. The script speaks of three well-known stories: that of the frogs who, not happy with their free life demand a leader, that of the crows, who even though were given the gift of song wanted to sing in the same way the horses neigh, and that of a group of people who set sail only to meet a terrible storm and ask for the help of Neptune to save their lives. Henze uses many colours through the use of two pianos, percussion, and of course contemporary harmonies and idioms to portray these three stories.
Taking part in the concert are the Vocalise Chamber Choir with soloists for the rendering of the Brahms’ Love Waltzes, pianists Caroline Calleja and Juliette Lopez, with percussionists Daniel Cauchi, Emanuel Busuttil and Noel Micallef and narrators Angelica Galea and Jean Pierre Agius.
The concert will be directed by Hans Jurgen Nagel.
The Vocalise administration is composed of Corazon Mizzi, Kevin Caruana, Fabian Galea, Rosabelle Bianchi and founder Claire Massa.
The concert forms part of an EU Youth Initiative project called “Youths Make Music”, and has been made possible also with the kind sponsorship of Vodafone and BOV.