Serenades on a Clear Night: Music of Schubert, Brahms, and Mendelssohn

Greg Geehern, Conductor

Several nineteenth-century composers presented their vocal and chamber works not in expansive concert halls, but in private salons and parlors. The Schubertiades, a series of intimate house concerts featuring the evocative music of Franz Schubert, were the forerunners of today’s cherished song recitals.

A young Felix Mendelssohn regularly entertained a host of fashionable guests in his family’s Berlin salon through his elegant chamber compositions and his prodigious performance skills.

Johannes Brahms, in a letter to his publisher, indicated that both his Liebeslieder and Neue Liebeslieder were suitable for Schubertiade-like house concerts.

These intimate spaces, and the fellowship that they engendered, prompted the composers to explore the similarly intimate themes of love, loss and the human being’s relationship to nature and the divine. Join the Bloomington Chamber Singers as we explore these themes through the vocal chamber music of Schubert, Mendelssohn and Brahms.

Cost: 15

For more information contact:

Jason Wadsworth
(812) 630-6490
[email protected]