~
Hengelbrock & Zaïcik
Thomas Hengelbrock, Conductor
Eva Zaïcik, Mezzo-soprano
Featuring Clara Schumann’s Ich stand in dunklen Träumen and Lorelei
Berenice despairs because she is convinced that her lover, Demetrio, wants to take his own life. Her monologue in Joseph Haydn’s “Scena di Berenice” takes us through all of the phases of desperation and suffering. The female protagonists in Clara Schumann’s lieder seem less helpless: Whether they mourn for lovers or calmly comb their hair on a cliff – as the composer renders them in music, their fates never determined by others. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s lively Symphony No. 34 and Robert Schumann’s Fourth, which is at once lost in time and striving forward, provide an orchestral frame for the vocal scenes from the lives of these imaginary women.