Jul 17 2022 to Jul 17 2022 6:30 p.m.

EVENT HAS ENDED

Where

Bangalore International Centre

7 4th Main Rd, Stage 2, Domlur 560071

Event Description

The Art Song Festival is a new festival for India, celebrating Western classical art song through events dedicated to showcasing Indian performers and composers. The festival was founded in 2020 by artistic director Nina Kanter, during her time teaching at KM Music Conservatory (KMMC) in Chennai, with the aim of offering educational and performance opportunities to young singers and pianists. The 2021 festival was delivered virtually in a new partnership between KMMC and Trinity Laban International Academies, reaching audiences worldwide, and in 2022 they return to KMMC, Chennai to deliver their first hybrid live/virtual celebration of art song! This year’s festival features masterclasses for singers and pianists, workshops for composers, a performance competition and a concert tour with visiting guest artists.

Art song is a favourite genre for performers and audiences of Western classical music. Usually written for solo singer and pianist and performed in concert halls rather than theatres, it offers audiences a more intimate performance experience than opera and requires finely nuanced delivery from performers. The songs set works by great poets, allowing singer and pianist to work together as equals to communicate sublimely beautiful poetry and music. The German genre began in the nineteenth century with simple songs written for amateur musicians to enjoy at home. Over the next hundred years, it blossomed into an international phenomenon, with thousands of songs written in various national styles, from the folk-like to highly sophisticated concert works for professional singers, pianists and orchestras.

Today’s concert features a selection of much-loved songs from some of the Romantic European composers who created this genre (German composers Franz Schubert and married couple Robert and Clara Schumann; the French composer Claude Debussy), plus Spanish and English composers who developed art song in the twentieth century, allowing audiences to hear different national styles. Robert Schumann’s song cycle Frauenliebe und –leben is one of the few great nineteenth-century works for female singer, unusually telling a woman’s story in a musical world which was dominated by male narratives. Our final part of the programme will feature the premiere performances of new art songs by Indian composers which were submitted for the 2021 festival, including a duet in Urdu and a lullabye in Tamil. We are proud to showcase these songs and support today’s composers telling contemporary stories, including songs reflecting on lockdown. We also welcome the young tenor Himanshu Barot, who was awarded Greatest Potential in the 2021 Festival.

Image credits
Header: Julius Schmid, A Schubert evening in a Vienna town house, 1897.
Thumbnail: Edgar Degas, Café Singer, ca. 1879, the Art Institute of Chicago.

This concert is supported by JSW and Furtados.