Throughout his life, Robert Schumann sought the "poetic", most notably in his song cycle Dichterliebe. Florian Boesch, a leading Lieder singer, embodies this quest. In 1840, Schumann composed numerous songs, including Dichterliebe, uniting words and music. Boesch, with pianist Malcolm Martineau, masterfully explores the Romantic world of these Lieder.
Thank goodness for Mendelssohn! If the 20-year-old Felix Mendelssohn had not brought Bach’s »St Matthew Passion« back to light in 1829, after it had lain forgotten in some archive since the first performance a century earlier, an incomparable masterpiece would be missing from the concert and church music repertoire. More than that, in fact: with his revival of the »St Matthew Passion«, the young composer kicked off a massive renaissance of Bach’s music that has lost none of its momentum to this day. One of the core works in this Bach revival is the »St Matthew Passion«, whose dramatic density and brilliant musical structure cast a spell over audiences 300 years ago, as they still do today. The Easter masterpiece is performed tonight at the Elbphilharmonie by a team of experienced Bach specialists: Philippe Herreweghe conducts the Collegium Vocale Gent together with a hand-picked line-up of soloists. A musical experience that will certainly stay with the audience long after the concert is over.
»Foreign is the foreigner only in a foreign land« – André Heller is using these words from a half-Dadaistic, half-philosophical text by the comedian and author Karl Valentin as the theme for his Reflektor festival. And with the lines »A stranger I arrived here, a stranger I go hence« begins perhaps the best-known song cycle of the romantic period: the »Winterreise« by Franz Schubert. At the start of André Heller’s »Reflektor«, the contemporary philosopher Peter Sloterdijk meets with the baritone Florian Boesch to talk about the sense of alienation emanating from the »Winterreise«. Florian Boesch, whom you can otherwise also experience in major opera and oratorio parts, has a particular passion for lieder. And the »Winterreise« with its lonesome wanderer on a futile journey through darkness and cold particularly attracted him: he has already recorded it twice and interpreted it countless times in concert – even theatrically. »The Winterreise is simply magnificent. The snowy landscape is its soul, its spirituality.« Peter Sloterdijk is one of the most important contemporary German philosophers and is internationally considered as a great thinker. This eloquent prolific writer is a popular voice in all great contemporary debates, from current political issues and climate change to feminism. His »Critique of Cynical Reason« is one of the best-selling philosophical books of the 20th century. Please note: This event takes place in German.
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