Under the ingenious title of Composing Consorts, Song Circle are presenting two recitals of songs by Schumann and Mahler and their spouses. In the first of these recitals last weekend in the John Field Room NCH it fell to the lot of Mary Callan Clarke (soprano) to introduce us to the vocal compositions of Clara Schumann and Alma Mahler.
The seven Schuman songs performed were notable for their skilfully atmospheric accompaniments, played with great sensitivity by Jimmy Vaughan; but though the songs were in the style of Robert Schumann, Clara could not equal him in the construction of memorable melodic lines.
Alma Mahler had studied under Zemlinsky and her songs (we heard four) are extremely sophisticated and quite unlike her husband's. Mary Callan Clarke sang these with more empathy than Clara's.
Colette McGahon sang four songs from Mahler's Das Knaben Wunderhorn and the whole of Schumann's Liederkreis Op.39 which sets poems by Eichendorff, a writer with whom Schumann had much in common.