LIEBESTREU FAITH, HOPE AND LOVE

On this new CD, Liebestreu, by Helene Wold and Liv Glaser, the faithful friendship between colleagues Mendelssohn-Schumann and Schumann-Brahms is portrayed in text and music three composers who offer each other support through their shared musical passion. Recurring themes are the longing for love, an obsession with the unattainable, and love’s vulnerability. Schumann’s four Mignon songs are an encounter with Romanticism and Goethe’s eternal beloved, Mignon. Familiar songs such as Mendelssohn’s Auf Flügeln des Gesanges and Schumann’s Der Nussbaum are also included. And there is Brahms’s early song Liebestreu as well. Here the twenty-year-old composer uses an exceedingly emotional and innovative tonal language to express overpowering feelings.

Helene Wold and Liv Glaser have collaborated musically over a number of years. A sense of humour, together with openness and a quality of congeniality characterize the duo, who are now releasing their first CD together. On this recording we also hear the Norwegian Academy of Music’s Graff fortepiano from 1825, as it might have sounded to the ears of the composers themselves.

Helene Wold has had a versatile singing career over the past years. She is often associated with the classical song and lieder repertoire, which is close to her heart. Liv Glaser has been a remarkably active musician and a mainstay of Norwegian musical life. Liv and Helene often give concerts using different fortepianos and presenting the Vienna Classical and early Romantic repertoire.