● “me reading heine, you somewhere in China”, wrote Ira Gershwin, ever the wit, for his brother George. Even in those days the German writer was a taste acquired by few Anglophones. Now the man known to his family as Harry languishes in the kind of perfumed obscurity which claims most poets.
In a Radio 3 feature, , Michael Goldfarb presented Harry, later Heinrich, not as a songwriter’s curio but as a major Romantic figure, whose example continues to put salt in the porridge
