Song for voice and keyboard by Randall Scarlata and Benjamin Hochman.Schubert: Schwanengesang (Swan Song)If you had to pick one word to describe the sentiment of Schubert’s final song cycle, Schwanengesang (meaning Swan Song), it would have to be sehnsucht. Sehnsucht is one of those wonderful German words, simultaneously quite literal and entirely impossible to translate. It combines the German words for “longing” and “addiction”; it means something like “yearning,” with a healthy dash of “nostalgia”.And so, Schubert creates these songs, which capture--in beautiful, perfect miniature--both the intensity of young love and the profound disappointment that only one whose heart has been broken can grasp. Both have that sense of longing, for the thing one has not yet enjoyed and for that which has slipped away.Taken together, the set of 14 songs offers a good overview of Schubert’s palette, venturing from light and hopelessly optimistic to deep and world-weary. We’ll hear them as performed at the Museum’s Calderwood Hall in February 2013, by baritone Randall Scarlata and pianist Benjamin Hochman.