• Tracks

British mezzo-soprano and BBC New Generation Artist Helen Charlston and pianist Sholto Kynoch present their take on Robert Schumann's famous song cycle Dichterliebe (A Poet's Love), based on poems by early 19th-century German poet Heinrich Heine. The sixteen songs express the birth of love, wonder, fragility in the face of love, emotions and nuances, wounds, sorrow, nostalgia, dreams, tears, betrayal, pain, consolation, and death. The music conveys all the misfortunes that the poet had to face, as if a mirror image existed between the poet and Schumann.

This release also features other songs based on texts by Heine, demonstrating the German poet's popularity with Austro-German composers of the early nineteenth century. Songs by Carl Loewe, Josephine Lang, Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel, and Felix Mendelssohn complete this exploration of Heine's poetry.

In addition to Schumann's cycle, the other highlight of this recital is the first recording of a work commissioned by Helen Charlston from composer (and singer) Héloïse Werner: Knight's Dream, also based on a text by Heine, and conceived as a companion piece for Dichterliebe. Imaginative and daring, this new work is both a tribute and a playful dialogue with Schumann and Heine, bringing the past and present together in a lyrical conversation.