DELIGHTED to share the album page for TOGETHERNESS which pianist Paul Cibis and I recorded in Traumton Studios in Berlin in June 2024. All details about the album, the track listings, programme notes, artist biographies can be viewed on Navona Records. The official trailer for the album on the Parma recordings YouTube channel features the song Áinlí by composer Criostóir Ó Loingsigh.
Listening page with links to all streaming services is here
https://lnk.fuga.com/helenhancockpaulcibis_togetherness
Originally called Zweisamkeit, the programme was originally performed as part of Zeitgeist Irland 24 and it explored themes of love, longing, partnership, parenthood and loss in Irish art song and lieder. The poems of Aldebert von Chamisso’s Frauenliebe und -leben (A Woman’s Love and Life), have been set by several composers, most famously by Robert Schumann (1810 – 1856). The protagonist and narrator of the cycle is a young girl who describes her experiences of first love, her engagement, marriage, pregnancy, parenthood,and abrupt loss of her spouse. Here we present this famous song cycle in a new way by combining elements from the settings of both Carl Loewe (1796 – 1869) and Schumann. This song cycle sits beside gems from the Irish songs repertoire – Tis the Last Rose of Summer (Moore/CV Sandford), The Garten Mother’s Lullaby (Hughes), At the Midhour of Night (Moore/Britten) as well as first recordings new music by Criostóir Ó Loingsigh and Anne Marie O’Farrell.
Paul and I performed a tour of a new recital Under (the light of) that same moon in March 2025. This programme of Mozart, Schubert, Fauré, Strauss, Ina Boyle, Ó Loingsigh and Feuchtwanger was greatly appreciated by audiences in Galway city, Kylemore Abbey and St. Ann’s Dublin.
