Sonate A-Dur - Kennt Ihr das Land der Eichenwälder

Now the good Steinway grand piano is making its appearance again. After I have wiped a little dust off the black lacquered ebony of the concert grand and tuned the instrument once more, I let my latest composition, the Sonata in A major - "Kennt Ihr das Land der Eichenwälder" ("Do you know the land of the oak woods") sound on it.
As you know, the structure of my sonatas from op09 is always the same. The sonatas are mostly based on romantic songs to which I composed song settings a few years ago. Then comes a quiet trio and the conclusion is the excessive exploration of the theme within the framework of a mostly very, very extended fugue, which I always plan for 3 voices, but then the 4th voice is added at the end. When the decision was made to play it on the piano sampler, all the restrictions on the range also fell away. And so it goes out up to g#6 and down to e1. The coda of the fugue demands everything from the piano. For the pianist, it will demand nothing at all; he will shrug off the work in the middle of the fugue and put it to one side ....

The song on which the work is based is the "German Song" and begins with the question "Do you know the land of oak forests"? A song of praise for the fatherland, entirely in the manner of the 19th century, when "völkische Töne" could be heard throughout Europe. Today, if you sang this song, you would be insulted as a right-wing mop, although there are certainly some homophonic movements of this song for male choir that resound out of the window into the open air from many a pub where people are busily rehearsing over spirituous beverages .....

Joking aside ..... the text of this song is by Franz Emanuel August Geibel.
Franz Emanuel August Geibel, born in Lübeck on 17 October 1815 and died there on 6 April 1884, was a German lyricist.
From 1843 onwards, he was the most successful poet of his time, whose song work inspired composers such as Robert Schumann, Hugo Wolf, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy and Johannes Brahms.