Mezzo-soprano Helen Charlston and pianist Sholto Kynoch present a programme celebrating Heinrich Heine’s vivid poetry and the blurred boundaries between reality and imagination in life and love. At its heart is Dichterliebe, Schumann’s 1840 song cycle drawn from Heine’s Lyrisches Intermezzo, alongside Knight’s Dream – a 2023 BBC Radio 3 commission by Héloïse Werner, alumna of the Leeds Song Young Artists Programme, written as a contemporary companion piece.

Heine’s poetry anchors the programme, guiding us from the 19th to the 21st century through works by Josephine Lang, Carl Loewe, and Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn, each offering a unique take on Heine’s concise and evocative texts. Werner’s imaginative setting closes the programme – part homage, part playful dialogue with both Schumann and Heine—bringing past and present into lyrical conversation.

“With supremely sensitive playing from Kynoch, Charlston made us struggle with her over all these emotional hurdles in a superb performance, both exhausting and elating.” (The Guardian, Oct 2023)

Programme:

Clara Schumann
Sechs Lieder (op. 13)  

Fanny Hensel
Ein Fichtenbaum steht einsam

Felix Mendelssohn
Auf Flügeln des Gesanges

Robert Schumann
Die Lotosblume

Carl Loewe
Die Lotosblume

Fanny Hensel
Schwanenlied

Josephine Lang
Wenn zwei von einander scheiden

Felix Mendelssohn
Reiselied

Héloïse Werner
Knight’s Dream
(Commissioned by BBC Radio 3 for the artists in 2023)

Robert Schumann
Dichterliebe

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