Arias
Song Cycles
Richard Strauss — Mädchenblumen (Maiden Flowers), Op. 22 Written by the young Richard Strauss in 1888, Mädchenblumen sets four poems by Felix Dahn, each likening a girl to a flower. Cornflower, poppy, ivy, water lily — four blossoms, four temperaments, four ways of being young and in love. Like an early-morning garden, the cycle holds something fragile and luminous: every feeling opens like a petal, tender and trembling in the light. Strauss gives each flower its own colour in sound — serene, playful, devoted, or veiled in mystery — so that the whole set becomes a quiet portrait of awakening: the wonder of first feeling, and the delicate beauty youth carries within, until the wind of change passes over the garden.
Performed by Anastasia Kradènova and Anna Braginskaia
Performed by Anastasia Kradènova and Anna Braginskaia
Arnold Schoenberg — Vier Lieder (Four Songs), Op. 2 Composed in 1899–1900, these four songs catch Schoenberg at a threshold — the moment his music begins to slip free of traditional harmony and reach toward something new. Three of the poems are by Richard Dehmel, whose dense, sensual imagery drew the young composer like few others; the last is by Johannes Schlaf. Together they move through a single arc of feeling: from the charged stillness of waiting, through tender and almost prayer-like love, to a radiant burst of spring light. The harmonies shift like mist at the border of night and day — never quite settling, always becoming something else, so that longing turns to hope and shadow gives way to sun. This is early Schoenberg at his most lyrical: bold, searching, and unexpectedly beautiful.
Performed by Anastasia Kradènova and Anna Braginskaia
Performed by Anastasia Kradènova and Anna Braginskaia
Robert Schumann – “Frauenliebe und Leben” Op. 42
Eight songs, a true cycle unified by a continuous narrative — and one of the most intimate portraits in all of German Lied. The poems are by Adelbert von Chamisso, and they follow a woman’s love from first meeting to widowhood. First glance, first wonder, the impossibility of believing she is chosen — then betrothal, marriage, motherhood, and finally the silence left by loss.
Schumann wrote this cycle in 1840, the year of his marriage to Clara Wieck, and his music evokes the woman’s shifting moods with extraordinary sensitivity. Every song is a different shade of feeling: joy so bright it almost hurts, tenderness so quiet it barely breathes, and grief that, at the end, turns inward and simply holds.
Performed by Anastasia Kradènova and Anna Braginskaia
Eight songs, a true cycle unified by a continuous narrative — and one of the most intimate portraits in all of German Lied. The poems are by Adelbert von Chamisso, and they follow a woman’s love from first meeting to widowhood. First glance, first wonder, the impossibility of believing she is chosen — then betrothal, marriage, motherhood, and finally the silence left by loss.
Schumann wrote this cycle in 1840, the year of his marriage to Clara Wieck, and his music evokes the woman’s shifting moods with extraordinary sensitivity. Every song is a different shade of feeling: joy so bright it almost hurts, tenderness so quiet it barely breathes, and grief that, at the end, turns inward and simply holds.
Performed by Anastasia Kradènova and Anna Braginskaia
World premiere of the song cycle “Beneath the Tomb and the Moon” by composer Jialu Yang, set to English translations of texts by Jalaluddin Muhammad Rumi. Soprano – Anastasia Kradènova Conductor – Yuri Taguchi