A translation of Maykov provides the words of the first Opus 73 song, Love’s Tempest. Each verse begins quietly and slowly before a great outburst allegro con fuoco, representing first a storm at sea, and then a ‘tumult’ in the poet’s heart created by a mental image of his loved one. The song’s companion, Serenade, has a repetitive refrain, ‘Dreams all too brief, Dreams without grief, Once they are broken, come not again’; ideal for a composer preoccupied with dreams, and whose precarious emotional equilibrium was being constantly threatened.

from notes by Geoffrey Hodgkins © 1998