I’m in the process of figuring out what to play on a planned spring recital, and it’s made me think a lot about the largely forgotten art of programming – the act of picking what pieces will be on a concert.I was poking through some of my music that I haven’t looked at for a long, long while, and came across a set of Three Legends by Heinrich von Herzogenberg. He and his wife, Elizabeth Stockhausen, were both good friends of Brahms, and there is a good record of correspondence between the three of them (yet another triangle in Brahms’ private life along with Robert and Clara Schumann).
Heinrich von Herzogenberg
I first encountered these pieces by hearing them on a recording (sadly, out of print) by Paul Coletti, and they’re quite nice, treading the line between Brahms and Bruch, which is an interesting axis. It turns out that Herzogenberg taught at the Hochschule fur Music in Berlin, where he in turn urged a young Ralph Vaughan Williams to study with Max Bruch.
With these three composers, we’ve got a nice basis for a recital: Herzogenberg’s Legends, Vaughan Williams’ Romance, and Bruch’s Romance. It’s not hugely exciting or varied, but it does show influences between composers and their peers, and all of these pieces are lovely and show the lyric gifts of the viola to good effect.
Other ideas are using compositions which were composed for the same competition, such as the 1919 Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge competition, whose entries included Ernest Bloch’s Suite for Viola and Piano, Paul Hindemith’s Op. 11/4 Sonata, and the Rebecca Clarke Sonata.