Allan Clayton & James Baillieu: Beethoven & Tippett

Tenor Allan Clayton joins star song pianist James Baillieu to perform two masterpieces ruminating on love for one who is absent.

Michael Tippett thought of his masterpiece in song as having the subtitle ‘Love under the shadow of death’. Setting love poems by Sidney Keyes, The Heart’s Assurance represents a personal response to the death of a friend.

While Beethoven is not thought of foremost as a composer of small, intimate works, with An die ferne Geliebte he became the first major composer to write a narrative song cycle, and in doing so created a genre which inspired the great song composers of the Romantic age.