Program 11.10.

Ivor Gurney's [1890 - 1937]
"Ludlow and Teme" for tenor, piano and string quartet

Frank Bridge [1879 - 1941]
"Three Songs" for viola and voice

and selected songs by George Butterworth [1885 - 1916] and Arnold Bax [1883 - 1953]

Classical art songs and modern poetry – lieder recital meets poetry reading in this series of events organised jointly with the Haus für Poesie Berlin. Each of the four evening events held in the foyer of the Deutsche Oper Berlin will feature a poet reading original works whose themes complement the songs on the programme.

11.10.

This time, the event in the Songs and Poets series takes us to England in the first half of the 20th century. Different songs from the late and most late Romantic period will be presented, among others by two of the greatest song composers of their time: Ivor Gurney and George Butterworth. Their lives show many parallels typical of their time: Both set texts by the poet and scholar A. E. Housman from his volume "A Shropshire Lad" published in 1896, both were closely associated with the famous composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, and both fought in the First World War (Butterworth was killed in the Battle of the Somme aged only 31 and Gurney spent much of his life in mental institutions due to "war neurosis"). Some of Housman's settings will be played this evening, including Gurney's song cycle "Ludlow and Teme". There will also be songs by Frank Bridge and Arnold Bax.

The writer who will respond to the songs with his own texts this time is Alban Nikolai Herbst (born 1955 in Bensberg). Herbst is the great maverick of contemporary German literature; he became known in 1994 with the novel "Wolpertinger oder das Blau" (Wolpertinger or the Blue), which is heavyweight in every respect (the revised new edition was published by Elfenbein-Verlag in 2021). This was followed between 1998 and 2013 by the "Anderswelt" trilogy. Most recently, the poetry collection "Die Brüste der Béart" (diaphanes 2022) was published.