Dichterliebe
after Robert Schumann´s "Poet´s Love", op. 48, on texts by Heinrich Heine
VISION OF THE WORK
Love, loneliness, and human finiteness: Eternal themes permeate the sixteen songs of Robert Schumann’s famous Dichterliebe, based on poems by Heinrich Heine, in a seemingly harmless folk song tone. These songs are the sonic imaginings of a torn soul. An enigmatic soul that sings of a love we don’t know whether it is dreamed or a real past.
While in Schumann’s work each song is self-contained, the sixteen songs in my work appear like islands, organically woven into a large, newly conceived composition. The foundation of my composition is Schumann’s harmonies and melodies, which form the nuclei of my sound stream. Heine’s lyrics remain intact, as do Schumann’s vocal lines, although passages are repeated or new emphases are added. Everything remains in flux, a sonic stream of the unconscious. Accompanied by associative visualizations, my work doesn’t tell a chronological story, but rather opens surprising, individual windows into the human soul. Christian Jost
THE WORK IN THE MEDIA
Production at the Konzerthaus Berlin, october 21. 2017
with Peter Lodahl, tenor, and the Horenstein Ensemble Berlin under the musical direction of Christian Jost