Chór Polskiego Radia - Lusławice / Tworek / Fluda-Tkaczyk / Brahms’s Lieder - NOSPR

In his choral songs, we find a portrait of Johannes Brahms as a romantic fascinated by folklore, who allows himself to be carried away by the magic of folk legends. The concert by the Polish Radio Choir – Lusławice offers a rich overview of this particular sphere of Brahms’s output. In Seven Songs, Op 62, Brahms turns to, among other sources, texts from the collection Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Boy’s Magic Horn: Old German Songs) – a collection that would also inspire Gustav Mahler years later. Yet while Mahler sought narrative vignettes, Brahms appears to discover in folk texts and melodies the ancient sources of classical compositional models.

A different approach emerges in Songs and Romances, Op 93a, in which Brahms drew on both German and Serbian folk texts and the poetry of Rückert and Goethe. Each song constitutes a miniature scene, and in the structure of the cycle as a whole one can discern an allegorical tale of youth lost, maturity gained, and the discovery of inner spiritual strength. By contrast, Gypsy Songs, Op 103, confront us with the exoticism of a culture that fired the Romantic imagination with its exuberance, vivid colours, and unrestrained emotionality.

Szymon Maliszewski

Concert duration: approximately 70 minutes