Radio 3 Lunchtime Concert - Downpatrick Recitals - Robin Tritschler, Simon Lepper

Sean Rafferty introduces the penultimate Lunchtime Concert featuring song recitals recorded in Downpatrick, Co. Down. Today the Irish tenor, Robin Tritschler and pianist, Simon Lepper perform song cycles by Schumann and Britten. Schumann's Dichterliebe (A Poet's Love) is settings of 16 poems by Heinrich Heine and was composed during Schumann's year of song, 1840. Schumann arranged the the sequence of songs to tell the story of unrequited love. Over 100 years later in 1953, Benjamin Britten set the words of Thomas Hardy and the theme of the eight settings is the loss of innocence.