repertoire fridays: Frank Bridge "Three Songs for Mezzo-Soprano, Viola, and Piano" (1907)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3P6geP4tCVM&w=560&h=315]

English composer Frank Bridge (1879 — 1941) “Three Songs for Mezzo-Soprano, Viola, and Piano” (1907)

Performed by American mezzo-soprano Rebecca Ringle, Luke Fleming, viola, and Roger Steptoe, piano

I. Far, far from each other
Matthew Arnold (1822 — 1888)

Far, far from each other our spirits have flown,
And what heart knows another? Ah! Who knows his own?
Blow, ye winds! Lift me with you! I come to the wild.

Fold closely, O nature! Thine arms round thy child.
Ah, calm me! Restore me and dry up my tears.
On thy high mountain platforms, where morn first appears.

II. Where is it that our soul doth go?
Heinrich Heine (1797 — 1856), trans. K. F. Kroeker

One thing I’d know,
When we have perished,
Where is it that our soul doth go?
Where, where is the fire, that is extinguished?
Where is the wind?
Where is the wind but now did blow?
Where is it?
Where is it?
Where is it that our soul doth go?
When we have perished.

III. Music, when soft voices die
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 — 1822)

Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory.
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.

Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heaped for the belovèd’s bed.
And so my thoughts when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.

Repertoire Friday Double-Whammy

Rebecca Ringle TEDxYale “Live Performance as a Birthright”

“So what do I want you to do if you’re watching this? I want you to attend live performances. We have a long to-do list as a society. We need to see each other… The pleasure of shared music is part of your neurological birth-right as a human being.”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0p8m8BV4OSM&w=560&h=315]