John Mark Ainsley (tenor) is accompanied by pianist Roger Vignoles in Beethoven's 'An die ferne Geliebte'; and Schumann's song-cycle 'Dichterliebe'. (A BBC Radio 3 lunchtime concert.)
Beethoven's An die ferne Geliebte ('To the Distant Beloved') channels feelings of intense longing and fixation on the pain of separation. The earlier setting of poet Friedrich von Matthisson's Adelaide similarly focusses on fervent desire and the unattainable. Schumann's Dichterliebe, or 'A Poet's Love', traces a poet's increasing destitution as he yearns for his imagined love.