delayed anniversary concert

Yesterday, the music department of a local college - not Stanford - was to hold a noon concert commemorating the bicentenary of Robert Schumann's birth. The anniversary was actually back in June, but whatever. Liking Schumann, I decided to go, but up until the last minute I wasn't entirely sure there would actually be an event, as the doors to the recital hall weren't opened until three minutes after the concert was scheduled to begin. I thought of just going up, opening the door, and walking in, but supposed that the scruffy-looking guy standing in front of the door was probably official, and that all the other people gathering in the hallway were probably also waiting for the concert, and both these turned out to be true.

The concert turned out to be a lieder recital. We got the cycle Frauenliebe, Op. 42, and half of the longer Dichterliebe, Op. 48. Both in compositional quality and performance, Dichterliebe war besser. The male singer had a strong, expressive voice. Frauenliebe was backed by a computerized slide show of the translated lyrics accompanied by photos of young women either pregnant or with babies, but the three women who traded the songs off were all considerably older than that. They were all competent singers, but two of them had wet, soggy voices and the third, though fine technically, was cursed with a tone quality just somewhere south of Alvin and the Chipmunks.