Well, actually it was a stroll in the garden in bygone times of Schubert and Schumann and the like. Saralouise Owens sang songs of lost and found loves and the like with piano accompaniment from Stuart Long and it was quite beautiful if much of another era, a very erstwhile era. Maybe it's the advent of the pill in the '60s or a few world wars, but things are different now. The romance seems florid and unreal to our ears even if the Schubert Serenade seemed to suggest suggestiveness and that's common enough. I didn't follow the German lyrics, but I did the translations, and it was interesting. Mostly this was German, from Schubert and Schumann and Mahler and Hugo Wolf and one French from Henri Duparc, but Benjamin Britten was in English, as was a significant early female composer out of Melbourne, Linda Phillips, with lyrics lauding Ash trees and the cedars of Lebanon. It's a complex music, these short classical songs, rich in imagery and structurally and harmonically following the lyrics, unlike simple pop tunes where lyrics follow melody. So a lovely sound and a historical visitation as well. Lovely.
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