Craig Smith, piano

Susan Larson, soprano

Ray DeVoll, tenor

D'Anna Fortunato, mezzo-soprano

James Maddalena, baritone

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The Liederkreis Ensemble was a winner in the 1980 Naumburg Chamber Music Award. The five members of the ensemble performed together in the New England area for a decade before winning Naumburg, in opera, chamber music, lieder and oratorio. The idea of forming a vocal ensemble grew out of their desire to perform the German Romantic repertoire together. Their first concert was presented in 1976 as one in a series of Liederbends, including a variety of ensembls and piano or vocal solos. They later expanded their repertoire to include French and Italian works, sentimental American songs, and modern repertoire.

Naumburg Concert, March 9, 1981, Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center

Liederkreis Ensemble, 1980 Chamber Music Award

Craig Smith, piano; Susan Larson, soprano; Ray DeVoll, tenor; D'Anna Fortunato, mezzo-soprano; James Maddalena, baritone

Program

Schubert: Songs and Dances

Bartok: Four Slovak Folk Songs

Schumann: Spanisches Liederspiel, Op. 74

Rossini: Selections from "Sins of My Old Age"

Faure: Selected Ensembles

Review Excerpt, The New York Times, March 11, 1981

"All the best virtues of chamber music could be heard Monday night... musical agreement among peers, tonal refinement and elegant interpretations polished to a high sheen of technical excellence. While one expects such qualities as a matter of course from superior instrumental groups, tis time they applied to the less frequently encountered art of vocal chamber music.

The pleasures of the evening were enhanced by a delectable chooce of music, most of it seldom heard, because of the scarcity of groups such as the Liederkreis. Here was a rare opportunity to savor the chain of songs that comprise Schumann's gorgeous "Spanisches Liederspiel" Op. 74, several Bartok part songs, duets by Faure, a quartet by Rossini and an enchanting seqence of songs and dances by Schubert." - Peter G. Davis

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As part of their Naumburg prize, the Liederkreis Ensemble was awarded a commission by Andrew Imbrie "Campion Songs" (1981) which received its world premiere performed by the Liederkreis Ensemble on June 6, 1981 at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC.

Campion Songs, for vocal quartet with piano accompaniment, mirrors the perfurmed hyperbole of Thomas Campion's romantic poetic seductions. Campion himself was a composer, of course, and it is very likely that he wrote these poems for his own musical setting. The tempo and meter scheme of the three movements in Imbrie's setting vaguely resemble those of the Dream Sequence. Campion Songs was composed in 1981 for the Liderkreis Ensemble. - Anthony Korf

CAMPION SONGS

O never to be moved O never to be moved

O beauty unrelenting! Hard heart, too dearly loved; Fond love, too late repenting!

Why did I dream of too much bliss? Deceitful hope was cause of this. O hear me speak this, and no more: Live you in joy, while I my woes deplore. All comforts despaired Distaste your bitter scorning; Great sorrows unrepaired

Admit no mean in mourning: Die, wretch, since hope from thee is fled: He that must die is better dead. O dear delight, yet ere I die, Some pity show, though you relief deny.

Fire, fire, fire, fire! Fire, fire, fire, fire!

Love, here I burn in such desire That all the tears that I can strain Out of mine idle empty brain Cannot allay my scorching pain.

Come Trent, and Humber, and fair Thames, Dread Ocean, haste with all

Dread Ocean, haste with all thy streams: And, if you cannot quench my fire, O drown both me and my desire.

Fire, fire, fire, fire! There is no hell to my desire: See, all the Rivers backward fly, And the Ocean doth his waves deny, For fear my heat should drink them dry. Come, heavenly showers, then, pouring down; Come, you that once the world did drown: Some then you spared, but now save all, That else must burn, and with me fall.

Come, O come, my life's delight Come, O come, my life's delight

Let me not in langour pine: Love loves no delay: thy sight, The more enjoyed, the more divine.

O come, and take from me The pain of being deprived of thee. Thou all sweetness dost enclose, Like a little world of bliss: Beauty guards thy looks: the Rose In them pure and eternal is.

Come then, and make thy flight As swift to me as heavenly light