“WIR WOLLEN UNS DER LIEBE FREUN” (WE WANT TO ENJOY LOVE)

“We want to enjoy love”, sing Pamina and Papageno during their duet in the Magic Flute. This sets the mood for the evening: for we also hear Beethoven’s variations on Mozart’s melody, variations which were written for cello and piano. A wealth of variety — in this case on the theme of love — can also be found in Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing“, a play for which Erich Wolfgang Korngold composed a musical accompaniment.

But we start with the 17-year old Dimitri Shostakovich rhapsodising about his first love, Tanja, in his Trio Op.8.  The evening closes with a work by Arnold Schönberg, at that time still in Late Romantic mode: his setting of Richard Dehmel’s “Verklärte Nacht” (Transfigured Night). In the poem, the female protagonist discovers what true love truly means: to be able to forgive!