Portrait Concert – Brigitta Simon with Pavel Kaspar

Portrait Concert – Brigitta Simon

Concert durations: 29 min

The young Hungarian soprano Brigitta Simon has been awarded numerous prizes at national and international competitions and will perform some challenging songs and arias together with violinist Thomas Albertus Irnberger and  pianist Pavel Kaspar.

First you will hear the song “Shepherd on the rock – Der Hirt am Felsen” by Franz Schubert (1797-1828), a setting of Wilhelm Müller‘ s poem,  It was composed in 1828 during the final months of the composer’s  life.

The song contains three sections, with viola and voice equally challenged. In the first section  the lonely shepherd on the mountaintop listens to echoes rising from below. The second section grows dark as he expresses grief and loneliness. The short last section anticipates the coming of spring and, with it, rebirth.

Sir George Alexander Macfarren (1813-1887), one of the most fascinating ´lost masters` of the nineteenth-century British music, composed about one hundred and sixty.two songs. The beautiful song “Pack Clouds Away”, originally with clarinet obligato,  is based on poetry by Thomas Heywood.

“Glitter and Be Gay” is perhaps the most well-known piece from Candide by Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990). It takes place in Paris. Cunegunde, a diva-like lady, decries her situation in which she is forced to accept jewelry from rich men and act happy to be with them.

The American-Italian composer Gian Carlo Menotti (1911-2007) wrote the masterpiece “The Telephone”, in which a boyfriend wants to speak with Lucy, but she does not get off the phone to her friends. So he also calls her, to tell Lucy, that he wants to marry her. 

 The bonus track is the first big vocal number of Emmerich Kalmans (1882-1953)  “Czárdásfürstin” : “Heia, heia, in the mountains is my homeland”. The “csárdás princess” Szilvia sings about her rural Transylvanian origins.

Performers:

Brigitta Simon – Soprano

Pavel Kaspar – Piano

Thomas Albertus Irnberger –  Violin/Viola