International Mendelssohn Festival

Chamber music rediscovered

Franz Schubert, Robert Schumann, Felix Mendelssohn, Franz Liszt, Johannes Brahms: music lovers all over the world know and love these great names of German Romantic music. There were other composers, however, like Emmanuel Chabrier or August Klughardt, who wrote fine and timeless works of their own but have since fallen largely into oblivion. One such chamber-music rediscovery are the »Schilflieder« (Reed Songs) written by Klughardt in 1872. Based on the verse cycle of the same name by Austrian poet Nikolas von Lenau, the pieces for viola, oboe and piano trace in music the melancholy musings of a first-person narrator who dreams of a love never to be fulfilled, his thoughts reflected by surrounding nature in the evening. An atmospheric portait of Romantic anguish.