fight for a song: Robert Schumann: Dichterliebe

Jędrzej Suska BaritoneLiza Pawłowska pianoforte

Robert Schumann's “Dichterliebe” was composed in 1840 to Heinrich Heine's poems from “Lyrisches Intermezzo”. The poet created in them the story of unhappy love, but its autobiographical character remains ambiguous. Instead of looking for one particular woman hidden behind the figure of the beloved, one can see in these poems a synthesis of various experiences, memories and poetic imagination. Schumann made another transformation: from scattered and contradictory material, he created a coherent story of love and its loss.

The beloved remains practically absent in it, we get to know her only through the memory and emotions of the poet. It is they who become the real theme of the cycle: the first delight gradually gives way to disappointment, irony, bitterness and attempts to free oneself from the past. A special role is played by the piano, which not only accompanies the voice, but often adds what the text does not say outright — especially in elaborate postludes.

The title “Dichterliebe” — “The Poet's Love” — thus reflects well the essence of the work. It is not a realistic story of a specific relationship, but a romantic story of what happens to a feeling when it exists primarily in memory.

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Jędrzej Suska photo by Krzysztof Budych