Kaija Anneli Saariaho - The Tempest Songbook (2004)
Conductor - Emilio Pomarico
Soprano - Olivia Vermeulen
Bariton - Peter Schöne
Ensemble Musikfabrik
Texts by William Shakespeare, edited by Saariaho
0:00 - Ariel’s Hail:
All hail, great master! Grave Sir, hail! I come
To answer thy best pleasure; be it to fly,
To swim, to dive into the fire, to ride
On the curled clouds, -- to thy strong bidding task
Ariel and all his quality.
I boarded the king’s ship; now on the beak,
Now in the waist, the deck, in every cabin,
I flamed amazement: sometime I’d divide,
And burn in many.
Then I beat my tabour,
At which, like unbacked colts, they pricked their ears,
Advanced their eyelids, lifted up their noses
As they smelt music. So I charmed their ears.
2:50 - Caliban’s Dream:
Be not afeard: the isle is full of noises,
Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices,
That, if I then had wak’d after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me; that, when I wak’d,
I cried to sleep again.
5:18 - Mirabda’s Lament:
Miranda:
If by your art, my dearest father, you have
Put the wild waters in this roar, allay them.
The sky, it seems, would pour down stinking pitch,
But that the sea, mounting to the face of sky
Dashes the fire out. O, I have suffered
With those that I saw suffer! O, the cry did knock
Against my very heart! Poor souls, they perished!
Had I been any god of power, I would
Have sunk the sea within the earth, or ere
It should the good ship so have swallowed, and
The fraughting souls within her.
Prospero:
Be collected:
No more amazement: tell your pitying heart
There’s no harm done.
8:53 - Prospero’s Vision:
You do look, my son, in a moved sort,
As if you were dismay’d: be cheerful, sir.
These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep. Sir, I am vex’d;
[Bear with my weakness; my, brain is troubled:
Be not disturb’d with my infirmity:
If you be pleased, retire into my cell
A turn or two I’ll walk,
To still my beating mind.
13:13 - Ferdinand’s Comfort:
Where should this music be? I’th’ air or th’ earth?
It sounds no more;--and sure it waits upon
Some god o’ th’ island. Sitting on a bank,
Weeping again the king my father’s wrack,
This music crept by me upon the waters,
Allaying both their fury and my passion,
With its sweet air: thence I have follow’d it,--
Or it hath drawn me rather,--but ’tis gone.
No, it begins again.
#shakespeare #lieder #tempest