Schubertiade 21 - 28 July 2025

"Falseness and envy were entirely foreign to him. His character combined tenderness and roughness, sensuality and innocence, sociability and melancholy. Modest, open, childlike, he had patrons and friends who shared in his fate and his works with all their hearts."

The poet Johann Mayrhofer could hardly have found more affectionate words to remember his close friend Franz Schubert. Like him, many of those lucky enough to know Schubert personally described him as kind-hearted and reserved — yet also intensely passionate, hungry for music and for life. Shy of pushing himself into the Viennese musical world, he found his true audience and inspiration in a close-knit circle of friends and fellow thinkers.

They called them “Schubertiades”: evenings where Schubert would sit tirelessly at the piano, often singing his own lieder; where trios and quartets were played, poetry by Goethe and Heine was read aloud — and sometimes, at the end of it all, there was dancing. These were nights full of feeling, connection, and creative energy.

The concerts we present echo the spirit of those gatherings, especially in its wish to bring Schubert back into focus and encounter him afresh. We’ll hear a symphony he wrote at seventeen, a chilling lied composed in a single flash of inspiration, the haunting thoughts of a woman lost in obsession, and a song that feels as though it came straight from a child’s heart.

In this music, Mayrhofer’s words come to life — and so does the vast emotional world of a man who still speaks powerfully to us today.