We are delighted to announce a special performance featuring our Melbourne-based musicians and soprano Jacqueline Porter, as we return to the Melbourne stage for the first time in twelve months.

Robert Schumann’s Frauenliebe und Leben (A Woman’s Love and Life) encompasses the entirety of one woman’s love for her man, from meeting until death. Written in 1840, Schumann’s Liederjahr or ‘Year of Song’ – an extraordinary period in which many of his most famous songs were written – the timing is no accident: he was desperately in love with Clara Wieck and was suing her father for their right to marry. His longing for Clara pours out in these eight songs.

Edvard Grieg creates a similarly longing mood in his Two Elegiac Melodies, Op.34, and his unfinished String Quartet No. 2, though Grieg’s longing, as ever, is for the landscapes of his beloved Norway. The text in the Elegiac Melodies is taken from poems by Aasmund Olafsson Vinje, a quintessential Romantic nationalist whose works were preoccupied with rural Norwegian life – all traits he shares with Grieg!

“As always, ARCO offered an intelligent and warm performance, demonstrating the importance of historically informed musicianship and showcasing the impact of period instruments with gut strings.”
ArtsHub, July 2020

LOVE & LIFE | GRIEG & SCHUMANN

Monday 15 March | 6.00pm & 8.30pm
Primrose Potter Salon
Melbourne Recital Centre

ARTISTS

Australian Romantic &
Classical Orchestra
Rachael Beesley | director
Jacqueline Porter | soprano

PROGRAM

Edvard Grieg
String Quartet No.2, EG 117

Robert Schumann
Frauenliebe und Leben, Op.42
(arr. Shauna Beesley)

Edvard Grieg
Two Elegiac Melodies, Op.34

Click here to read our LOVE & LIFE concert program.

More concerts
in this series