LIEDER ALIVE! Launches 11th Season on Sunday

Composer Tarik O’Regan, soprano Heidi Moss Erickson, and pianist John Parr (courtesy of LIEDER ALIVE!)

Those that follow this site regularly probably already know that the Grand Opening of the Eleventh Annual Liederabend Season, presented by LIEDER ALIVE!, will take place this coming Sunday. Those readers will also know that the highlight of the program will be the world premiere of a new song cycle by Tarik O’Regan entitled Seen and Unseen, which will be performed by soprano Heidi Moss Erickson, accompanied at the piano by John Parr. I had hoped that, this close to the performance, specifics for the remainder of the program would have been finalized and released; but, sadly, that is not the case. The program will still offer settings of the poetry of Emily Dickinson composed by Aaron Copland, George Walker, and Lori Laitman, along with selected songs composed by Richard Strauss, Lili Boulanger, Anton Webern, and Kurt Erickson. What those songs will be may not be revealed until the program is printed! [added 9/30, 8:50 a.m.: The titles of the songs that will precede Seen and Unseen are as follows:

The Dickinson selections will be taken from Copland’s 12 poems of Emily Dickinson (“Going to Heaven” and “Heart, we will forget him”), Walker’s Emily Dickinson Songs (“I have no life but this”), and Laitman’s Four Dickinson Songs (“Im Nobody” and “If I… can stop one Heart from breaking”). Strauss will be represented by “An die Nacht” from his Brentano Lieder and “September” from his “last songs” collection. The Webern selection will be his Opus 4 set of five settings of poems by Stefan George. The Boulanger offering will consist of three songes from her Clairières dans le ciel (clearings in the sky) settings of pomes by Francis Jammes. Finally there will be three Erickson songs, each setting a text by a different poet: Friedrich Hebbel (“Ich und Du”), Josef von Eichendorf (“Mondnacht”), and Carl Sandberg (“Young Sea”).]

The performance will begin at 5 p.m. this Sunday, October 2. The venue will be the Noe Valley Ministry at 1021 Sanchez Street, located between 23rd Street and Elizabeth Street. Tickets are being handled through an Eventbrite event page; and, as of this writing, only the $80 reserved seats are available. While this is the first concert in the season, subscriptions are no longer being sold.