On April 7, Elza van den Heever returns to Carnegie Hall for her great anticipated recital with pianist, Vlad Iftinca, featuring works by Alban Berg, Richard Wagner, Ludwig van Beethoven and Pieter De Villiers.
The program will begin with Berg’s Sieben frühe Lieder: a lush and colorful cycle of seven songs written between 1905 and 1908. Next, Ms. van den Heever and Mr. Iftinca will perform Seven Boerneef Songs by the South African composer and pianist, Pieter De Villiers. This set, written in the Afrikaans language, takes influences from the folk music of rural South Africa. Following this, the pair will perform Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder, with text by Mathilde Wesendonck who happened to be the composer’s muse and the wife of his benefactor. The program will be rounded out with Beethoven’s stormy and dramatic scena, “Ah! perfido”, a thirteen-minute, sung monologue of a woman who has been scorned by her lover.
Photo: Jiyang Chen