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In death you will find fulfilment, in your neighbour perhaps the truth behind love. Richard Strauss’s Vier letzte Lieder and Benjamin Britten’s Cabaret Songs – posthumous gems by two of the greatest song composers if the twentieth century – sing, each in their own way, about the big questions of life.
In 1948, when the rubble of the world conflagration was still smouldering, Strauss set to music three poems by Hermann Hesse and one by Joseph von Eichendorff for his swan song. These are lieder that, with their dreamy lyricism, find comfort in the irrevocable cyclicity of nature and reassure us: what if death brings peace?
The melancholy nature of Strauss’s late romanticism is at odds with the wit and charm of Benjamin Britten’s pre-war Cabaret Songs. Based on poems by his good friend W.H. Auden, ‘Tell me the Truth About Love’, ‘Funeral Blues’, ‘Johnny’ and ‘Calypso’ reveal, with their spirited, jazzy undertones, a very different facet of the composer whose opera The Turn of the Screw we are also performing this season.
After unforgettable appearances in Les Huguenots and Bastarda, among others, soprano Lenneke Ruiten will now sing for the first time a recital on our stage. Accompanied at the piano by Thom Janssen, she will present a richly filled evening full of contrasts that will immerse you completely in the poetry of song.