Lara Downes: Love/Life

“Love,” pianist Lara Downes tells Apple Music Classical, “is the purpose of living. It brings immense joy and intense pain, it makes us selfless, fearless, and reckless. It shapes and defines us.” The music on Downes’ playlist reflects the way that love, in its myriad forms, has transformed her life. As a touching tribute to her father who died when she was very young, Downes performs Schubert’s Frühlingsglaube (Believe in Spring). “Life is fragile, loss is unavoidable, but love is indestructible,” she says. And looking towards new life, the simple beauty of Florence Price’s Adoration in an arrangement for violin and orchestra, sparks memories of her love for her children. “I remember the feeling of awe and pure adoration when I held my newborn babies,” she says. The overwhelming power of romantic love is described in Schumann’s song “Widmung” (“Dedication”), in Liszt’s gorgeous piano arrangement, while Branford Marsalis’ soprano sax brings to Mahler’s “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen” a deep sense of introspective melancholy. “This piece describes a poet’s withdrawal from the everyday turmoil of the world to the safe haven of what he calls ‘my heaven, my love, my song,’” says Downes. “In my own darkest times, when life feels painful and the world seems cruel, music is always my refuge, my first and forever love.”