Robert Schumann: Frauenliebe Und -Leben. Op. 42 / Liederkrei

Schumann's most popular songs by mezzo-soprano Marianne Beate Kielland. Marianne Beate Kielland is established as an exceptional performer with a wide-ranging repertoire from baroque to contemporary.

Schumann's astonishing outpouring of songs in his so-called "Liederjahr" was inspired by his love for Clara, whom he married in September that year after prolonged and acrimonious opposition from her father. Schumann survived the ordeal of court appearances in which Friedrich Wieck attempted to defame his character. Myrthen (Myrtle Wreath), a group of twenty-six songs based on texts by several poets, including Ruckert, Goethe, Burns, Byron and Thomas Moore, was published on the day of Schumann's wedding. It contains many of his most popular songs.

Frauenliebe und -leben, Opus 42 is a sequence of eight songs, a true song-cycle unified by a continuing narrative and recurring musical material. The poems are by Adelbert von Chamisso, who was French-born but grew up in Germany. These verses (previously set in 1836 by Carl Loewe) provided a subject with which Schumann could closely identify - a young woman's love and life.. From dazzled ("blind") adoration of her lover, she progresses to marriage, experience of motherhood, and finally bereavement. A sentimental naivety is typical of Chamisso's earlier work, including Frauenliebe und -leben, and indeed of much German poetry of that time, but Schumann's sympathetic emotional engagement produces a memorable song-cycle, art of a deeper hue. His music evokes the woman's fluctuating moods with sensitivity