The commentaries by the composer himself and by Simon Nicholls are complementary and are presented here in dialogue, starting with Simon Nicholls.
Simon Nicholls: The song with orchestral accompaniment might be thought of as having two sources: the operatic Scena (Mozart: Basta, vincesti…Ah, non lasciarmi, no; Beethoven: Ah, perfido!) and, more straightforwardly, songs whose accompaniments were originally written for piano and were orchestrated by the composer or by another hand. Schubert’s songs were orchestrated by Berlioz, Brahms, Reger, Webern and others – in the cases of Brahms and Webern, a close affinity with Schubert’s original is demonstrated. Wolf orchestrated some of his own most spectacular songs, notably Prometheus. In the first half of the twentieth century the song with orchestra became a symptom of luxurious opulence in the many examples by Richard Strauss where the piano version is essentially a second best. The Seven Early Songs of Berg represent a late High Romanticism, but the same composer’s Altenberg Lieder, in which the delicate accompaniment of a Mahlerian orchestra to miniature texts unmistakeably gives off a rich aroma of decadence, of the end of an era, point to the ‘modern’ period.
Andrei Golovin: Nikolai Medtner is one of the composers for whom I have a special reverence. I will make bold to state that his songs are unsurpassed masterpieces of Russian vocal music in the first half of the twentieth century. Amongst the Russian poets whose verses were set to music by Medtner we find the names of Pushkin, Lermontov, Tyutchev, Fet – the greatest representatives of the ‘Golden Age’ in Russian poetry. In my view, poetry on this level does not need music! What can a composer add to what has been uttered by Pushkin or Tyutchev? But something incredible happens: Medtner rises to the level of the poets; the synthesis of music and poetry engenders a new, unprecedented dimension. …
