Lunchtime Concert - Songs of Travel and Distance

Anna Goldsworthy  piano
Teddy Tahu Rhodes  baritone

Vaughan Williams  Songs of Travel
Beethoven  An die ferne geliebte, Op. 98

In setting Alois Jeitteles’s An die ferne geliebte (To the Distant Beloved) to music, Beethoven did much to immortalise the quintessential Romantic wayfarer, whose reflections on the metaphysics of love, longing and loneliness exerted an enduring influence on many of the great song cycles to follow, from Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin to Schumann’s Liederkreis. Almost one hundred years later, Ralph Vaughan Williams infused Robert Louis Stevenson’s Songs of Travel and Other Verses with his own vastly different harmonic language, producing a career-defining work that continues to hold a unique place in the hearts of audiences.

Fresh from his appearance in Kaija Saariaho’s Innocence (the headline opera of the 2025 Adelaide Festival), baritone Teddy Tahu Rhodes (our newest staff member) joins forces with Professor Anna Goldsworthy (Director of the Elder Conservatorium) to open our 2025 concert series with a poignant sojourn through the spatial and temporal landscapes of self-discovery.