Schwanengesang

Last week we heard Mahler’s Song of the Earth but, because of the limitations of time, without its final and arguably greatest song, Der Abschied (The Farewell). Here’s another Abschied, but of a very different character – or is it really? – from Schubert’s Schwanengesang.

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau is accompanied on this clip by Hartmut Höll.

Here’s the painting I wasn’t being very lucid about yesterday (Wednesday) in the context of Schubert’s Die Stadt: Arnold Böcklin’s Die Toteninsel (The Isle of the Dead) (this is one of several versions). The painting was used by Rachmaninov as the basis of a tone poem called, unsurprisingly, The Isle of the Dead.

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