For this immersive performance, lyric soprano Natanya Sheva Washer and guitarist Sean Brennan will explore music inspired by nature, including works by Florence Price, Kaija Saariaho, William Grant Still, Sergei Rachmaninoff, and Pauline Viardot. These pastoral and meditative songs are paired with rare, vividly illustrated books from the George Peabody Library collection.
About the Artists
Natanya Sheva Washer, soprano
In roles ranging from Monteverdi to Puccini, international soprano Natanya Sheva Washer has had the pleasure of singing for renowned venues such as the Vatican and Carnegie Hall. She mesmerizes her audience with ever-evolving interpretations which elicit a truly genuine performance.
Natanya has appeared Maryland Lyric Opera, Center Stage, The Denyce Graves Foundation’s “Shared Voices”, The Baltimore Tiffany Series, Young Victorian Theater Company, Baltimore Annex Theater, Bach in Baltimore, Peabody Opera Theater, and The El Paso Opera Company. Such roles range from Poppea in Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea, Pamina in Mozart’s The Magic Flute, to Pitti-Sing in Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado. In February 2015, Natanya performed the role of Maria Bertram in the US premiere of Jonathan Dove’s opera Mansfield Park at Baltimore’s Theater Project. And in February 2016, she performed the role of Elsie Whinthrop in the World premiere of Paul Crabtree’s opera The Ghost Train at the B&O Railroad Museum.
Natanya is currently a soprano soloist for Bach in Baltimore, Maryland Opera, and the Tiffany Concert Series. As a part of the Tiffany Series, her solo voice has been recorded and archived by the Maryland Historical Society. She made her international debut singing at the Vatican in 2010, and has since continued an international career working with talent such as the Juarez Symphony Orchestra.
Sean Brennan, guitar
Sean Brennan is a multi-disciplinary guitarist and educator hailing from Baltimore, Maryland. As a performer, Sean specializes in contemporary music, and regularly works with living composers. He has given multiple world premieres of new solo and chamber works, including the works of Jordan Chase, Kyle Dubin, and Johnathan Hugendubler. He has performed and recorded George Crumb’s work “Quest”, which has been preserved for posterity in the Library of Congress. He has performed in the Now Hear This contemporary ensemble with member of Alarm Will Sound. Recent engagement have included the About/face concert series, Peabody on the Court concert series, Fret Festival, and the Blank Space concert series.
As an educator, Sean has extensive experience over a wide range of students and teaching environments. In addition to teaching at the Preparatory, he has taught courses at the Peabody Institute, and is a faculty member Notre Dame of Maryland University and Harmonic Music Studios. Sean has also participated in Johns Hopkins research, where he has led guitar group classes for adults with Parkinson’s disease. His students have been accepted to the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University, Penn State University, University of Tampa, and the Interlochen Center for the Arts.
Sean completed both his undergraduate and graduate degrees in performance and pedagogy from the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University, and is a current candidate in the Graduate Performance Diploma program, under the tutelage of Julian Gray.
Program
Max Richter (b. 1966): On the Nature of Daylight
Kaija Saariaho (1952-2023): Lohn (I, VI, VII)
Colin Read (b. 1990): I Do Not Love You (Sonnet XVII)
Pauline Viardot (1821-1910): Fleur desséchée
Franz Liszt (1811-1886): Oh! Quand je dors
Florence Price (1887-1953): An April Day
William Grant Still (1895-1978): The Breath of a Rose
Laura Snowden (b.1989): The Strange World of Spiders
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908): The Nightingale and the Rose
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov: Song of India
Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943): How Fair This Spot
Osvaldo Golijov (b. 1960): Lúa descolorida
Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992): O Sacrum Convivium
Texts and Translations
-
Kaija Saariaho: Lohn (I, VI, VII)
I.
When the days are long in May
The sweet song of birds from afar seems lovely to me
And when I have left there
I remember a distant love
I walk bent and vowed with desire
So much so that neither song nor hawthorn flower
Please me more than the icy winter
VI.
God who made everything that comes and goes
And formed this distant love
Grant me the power of my heart
Soon to see the distant love
Truly in a propitious place
And that the room and garden
Always appear as palaces to me.
VII.
He speaks true who says I am avid
And longing for the distant love
For no joy gives me pleasure
Like the pleasure of the distant love
But what I want is forbidden to me
So my godfather endowed me
That though loving I will not have been loved.
Tornada
But what I want is forbidden to me
So may my godfather be cursed
Who made me not to be loved.
-
Colin Read: I Do Not Love You (Sonnet XVII)
I do not love you as if you were a rose of salt, topaz,
or arrow of carnations shot off:
I love you as one loves certain dark things, are to be loved,
In secret, between the shadow and the soul.
I love you as the plant that never blooms but carries
In itself the light of hidden flowers,
Thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance risen
from the earth lives darkly in my body.
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you straightforwardly without complexities or pride:
So I love you because I know no other way than this,
Where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close when I fall asleep.
Poem by Pablo Neruda
-
Pauline Viardot: Fleur desséchée (Pressed flower)
In this old book you have been forgotten
Flower without scent or color
But a strange reverie
Fills my heart when I see you.
What day, what place witnessed your birth?
What was your destiny? Who picked you?
Who knows? Perhaps I knew
Those whose love preserved you!
Faded rose, do you recall
The first hours or the farewell?
The conversations in the meadow
Or in the silent wood?
Is he still living? Does she exist?
On which branches do their nests sway?
Or like you, who were so lovely,
Are their charming looks withered?
Text by Alexander Pushkin
-
Franz Liszt: Oh! Quand je dors
Oh! while I sleep, come to my bedside
Just as Laura appeared to Petrarch
And in passing, let your breath touch me…
Suddenly my lips
Will part!
On my troubled brow, where a dark dream
The lasted too long is perhaps ending
Let your gaze fall like a star…
Suddenly my dream
Will become radiant!
Then on my lips where a flame flickers
A flash of love which God made pure,
Place a kiss, from an angel become a woman…
Suddenly my soul
Will awaken!
Oh come! just as Laura appeared to Petrarch!
Text by Victor Hugo
-
Florence Price: An April Day
On such a day as this I think,
On such a day as this,
When earth and sky and nature’s world
Are clad in April’s bliss;
And balmy zephyrs gently waft
Upon your cheek a kiss;
Sufficient is it just to live
On such a day as this.
-
William Grant Still: The Breath of a Rose
Love is like dew
On lilacs at dawn:
Comes the swift sun
And the dew is gone.
Love is like star-light
In the sky at morn:
Star-light that dies
When day is born.
Love is like perfume
In the heart of a rose:
The flower withers,
The perfume goes–
Love is not more
Than the breath of a rose,
No more
Than the breath of a rose.
Poem by Langston Hughes
-
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov: The Nightingale and the Rose
Enslaved by the rose, the nightingale
Both day and night singing over it;
But rose silently listens song …
The lyre as a singer
Sings for young maidens;
A maiden dear do not know –
Who sings it? why
Sad songs so it?…
-
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov: Song of India
Unnumbered gems in vaulted caves lie treasured,
Beneath our sunlit seas lie pearls unnumbered,
Great is the wealth of Hindustan.
‘Mid those halcyon waters
On a rock of sapphire
Dwells the bird called Phoenix,
With a woman’s features.
Singing songs of Eden
With surpassing sweetness,
Covering all the ocean
With her glorious plumage.
Whoso hears her singing,
All things else forgetteth.
-
Sergei Rachmaninoff: How Fair This Spot
How nice it is here…
Look – far away,
The river is a blaze of fire;
The meadows lie like carpets of color
The clouds are white.
Here there is no one…
Here it is silent…
Here is only God and I,
The flowers, the old pine tree,
And you, my dream!
-
Osvaldo Golijov: Lúa Descolorida
Moon, colorless
like the color of pale gold:
You see me here and I wouldn’t like you
to see me from the heights above.
Take me, silently, in your ray
to the space of your journey.Star of the orphan souls,
Moon, colorless:
I know that you don’t illuminate
sadness as sad as mine.
Go and tell it to your master
and tell him to take me to his place.But don’t tell him anything,
Moon, colorless,
because my fate won’t change
here or in other worlds.
If you know where Death
has her dark mansion,
Tell her to take my body and soul together
To a place where I won’t be remembered,
Neither in this world, nor in the heights above.