On June 1 and 2, 2013, the Capitol Hill Chorale presented Lieder! at Capitol Hill Presbyterian Church, a program of German art song offered in memory of the baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (May 28, 1925 – May 18, 2012). Artistic Director Frederick Binkholder programmed the concerts to mark the first anniversary of Fischer-Dieskau’s death, drawing on the nineteenth-century song repertoire — Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn and Brahms — for which the singer was best known.
Lieder is usually an art form for the solo voice, and the program worked around that in two ways. Iconic songs such as “An die Musik” and “Ave Maria” were heard in choral arrangements by Dieter Frommlet, while other selections had been written for chorus from the start, among them Brahms’s Sechs Quartette, op. 112 and Schumann’s double-choir “An die Sterne.” The first half also took in Schubert’s Deutsche Messe, D. 872 — a mass that is, as Binkholder wrote in his program notes, really a collection of songs in a sacred rather than secular setting.
The concerts came in the Chorale’s twentieth season on Capitol Hill, in the same church where the ensemble had given its first program in December 1993. The second half ranged wider, adding Hugo Wolf, Erich Korngold and Joseph Rheinberger to the German Romantic core.
Program
- An die Sterne, No. 1 from Vier doppelchörige Gesänge, op. 141 — Robert Schumann
- Deutsche Messe, D. 872 — Franz Schubert
- Four Songs — Schubert, arr. Dieter Frommlet (Liebe schwärmt auf allen Wegen; Seligkeit, D. 433; Ständchen, D. 889; Ungeduld, from Die Schöne Müllerin, D. 795)
- Three Songs from Winterreise, D. 911 — Schubert (Der Lindenbaum; Die Krähe; Der Leiermann)
- Vier Lieder, op. 100 — Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (Andenken; Lob des Frühlings; Frühlingslied; Im Wald)
- Der Mond hat eine schwere Klag’ erhoben, No. 7 from Italienisches Liederbuch — Hugo Wolf
- Wenn ich in deine Augen sehn, No. 4 from Dichterliebe, op. 48 — Robert Schumann
- Liebesbriefchen, No. 4 from Einfache Lieder, op. 9 — Erich Korngold
- Sechs Quartette, op. 112 — Johannes Brahms (Sehnsucht; Nächtens; Himmel strahlt so helle und klar; Rote Rosenknospen; Brennessel steht an Weges Rand; Liebe Schwalbe)
- Erlkönig, D. 328 — Schubert
- Four Songs — Schubert, arr. Dieter Frommlet (An die Musik, D. 547; Lachen und Weinen, D. 777; Du bist die Ruh, D. 776; Ave Maria, D. 839)
- Mondnacht — August Pannen
- Abendlied, op. 69, no. 3 — Joseph Rheinberger
Frederick Binkholder, the Chorale’s Artistic Director, conducted. The guest soloist was baritone Nathan Wyatt — a recent master’s graduate in voice from Peabody, named a Tanglewood Music Festival fellow for the summer of 2013, and the son of Alan Wyatt of the Chorale’s bass section — who sang the sets from Winterreise, the Wolf, Schumann and Korngold songs, and Erlkönig.
