by Mike Telin
“The Wesendonck Lieder are beautiful and I just love to sing these songs any chance I get,” exclaims renowned dramatic soprano Jane Eaglen. “I learned them with my teacher when I first went to college at eighteen, and I have performed them many, many times, and every time I do I find something new and different about them.” On Saturday, March 2 beginning at 7:30 pm in Plymouth Church, Jane Eaglen will perform Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder with Blue Water Chamber Orchestra under the direction of Carlton Woods. The concert, titled Jane & Ludwig, also includes Beethoven’s Egmont Overture and Symphony No. 8.
The five songs that comprise the Wesendonck Lieder, Der Engel (The Angel), Stehe still! (Stand still!), Im Treibhaus (In the Greenhouse), Schmerzen (Sorrows) and Träume (Dreams) were composed while Wagner was working on his opera Tristan und Isolde. “Of course he was trying things out for Tristan when he was writing them, so I suppose it was a bit of writing the songs before the opera.” In fact Wagner sub-titled two of the songs Träume and Treibhaus, as studies for Tristan und Isolde. [Read more…]