Songs Of Love is Mezzo-Soprano Marianna Beate Kielland’s 13th album at NativeDSD Music. On it she is joined by Baritone Halvor Festervoll Melien and Pianist Nils Anders Mortensen on this album from Lawo Classics.

The songs on this release – volume 2 – continue the chronological list from volume 1.The album begins with the remarkably special cycle Wartburg, encompassing an enormous range of singing pathos. The text by Theodor Caspari has to do with Wartburg Castle, with its sweeping history. Martin Luther sought refuge there from May 1521 to March 1522. Saint Elisabeth of Thuringia resided there from 1211 to 1228, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe visited the castle several times, and, notably, the famous "minstrel contest" at the castle was an inspiration for Wagner when he composed his opera Tannhauser. So it is not so unusual that Theodor Caspari was also inspired by the castle's history and reputation when he wrote his Wartburg texts.

It is an adventure to immerse oneself in the Norwegian treasury of song. There is so much magnificent music, and so much of it bears witness to the time in which it was written. Sigurd Lie was one of the eminent and gifted composers at the end of the nineteenth century. His body of work includes instrumental music and music for male choir and, above all, around 75 songs seldom performed after his death. The song texts were written by Norwegian poets, among them Vilhelm Krag, Sigbjørn Obstfelder and Per Sivle. This is the first of two releases in which Kielland and Mortensen illuminate all the songs and let them shine.

Bach composed ten partitas – three for solo violin, one for solo flute and six for keyboard. As the term partita may mean, to quote from the Oxford Composer Companion to Bach, “a suite of dances or a set of variations” – it is no more precise than many other musical terms. If there is no obvious difference between the partita and the suite, there seems to be no justification for two separate terms. In the sixteenth century partita indicated one of a sequence of variations, but this meaning evolved, coming to signify a collection of movements and later – by the time of Bach's keyboard partitas – a suite of dances.