Ben Wager, bass-baritone
Jeffrey Miller, piano

Wednesday, January 18, 2017 - 8:00 PM
American Philosophical Society

American Philosophical Society

Benjamin Franklin Hall,
427 Chestnut Street
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About This Performance

“A hugely compelling vocal and theatrical presence” (Philadelphia Inquirer), 2009 Academy of Vocal Arts graduate Ben Wager makes his PCMS debut with a program highlighted by Vaughan Williams’s Songs of Travel. Written between 1901 and 1904, this work represents Vaughan Williams’s first major foray into song writing. Drawn from a volume of Robert Louis Stevenson poems of the same name, the cycle offers a rather different take on the idea of the wayfarer cycle. Stevenson’s world-weary yet resolute traveler shows neither the naiveté of Schubert’s miller in Die schöne Müllerin nor the destructive impulses of the heroes of Schubert’s Winterreise and Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen.

Vaughan Williams: Songs of Travel

Five Serenades
Tchaikovsky: Don Juan's Serenade
Schubert: Ständchen
Mozart: Deh, vieni alla finestra [from Don Giovanni]
Gounod: Vous qui faites l'endormie [from Faust]
Mussorgsky: Serenade [from Songs and Dances of Death]
Lehmann: In a Persian Garden [Sel.]
Fauré: Les Berceaux
Brahms: Verrat
Brahms: Von ewige Liebe
Strauss: Zueignung