Schubertíada 2025. Programme

When I review the complete programme of the Schubertíada, I pay attention to different things, step by step. I first counted the Lied recitals. This year, there will twelve and a half (I will explain later this “half”), which will be concentrated in the first week of the festival, while in the second, there will be mostly chamber music.

Next, I look for Schubert appearances. There are always many, of course; what kind of Schubertiade would that be, otherwise? On Saturday, August 16, the opening concert, with Ferran Albrich, Elionor Martínez, and Victoria Guerrero, will begin with a generous selection of Schubert's Lieder, most of which are well known and gorgeous. The following two concerts will be entirely dedicated to him: Florian Boesch returns to Vilabertran (hurray!) to complete the three great cycles: after Schwanengesang and Die schöne Müllerin, it's time for Winterreise, accompanied by Malcolm Martineau, another favourite of mine.

Some years ago took place in Barcelona the song series “Schubert Lied”, where young singers gave a Lieder recital with Schubert songs, and only Schubert, which is a very difficult thing to do. Some of those singers impressed me greatly, including Samuel Hasselhorn. The baritone will return to Vilabertran, with Ammiel Bushakevitz (another very interesting pianist) for a program that is part of their project “Schubert 200”. This program started with Die schöne Müllerin, composed in 1823, and will follow until 2028, the bicentenary of Schubert's death, including Lieder composed in those years. This summer we will enjoy the Licht und Schatten [Lights and Shadows] programme with Lieder written in 1824 and 1825. The previous time Hasselhorn went to Vilabertran he also gave a concert with Schubert's Lieder (those who were there remember especially the moving encore Abschied von der Erde), so you can see that he is a convinced Schubertian.

There will also be Schubert in the next two recitals, but we don't know the details yet. One will be that of Sara Blanch and Julius Drake (brava, Sara, who will also sing Strauss and Mahler!) and the other, the first Academy of the Schubertíada, which will present the duos formed by Tobias Lusser and Maximilian Kromer, and by Noëlle Drost and Jorian van Nee. On Wednesday 20th, Christiane Karg and Wolfram Rieger will do something very nice: they will perform Mahler’s Rückert-Lieder and Schubert’s “Rückert-Lieder” (I know, they are not known by this name nor are a cycle). And those will be virtually the last Schubert's Lieder, because there will be no more, with the exception of the second Academy on Sunday 24, with the duos formed by Jana Corominas and Llum Colomer, and by Belén García and Esther Vilar.

Baritones are the third thing I pay attention to, and we have a fine selection. I mentioned before the concerts of Boesch and Hasselhorn, which are part, along with that of Andrè Schuen and Daniel Heide and that of Matthias Goerne and Alexander Schmalcz, of the tribute to Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau on the centenary of his birth. Schuen and Heide are almost in the mood for "Vienna 1900" because they will perform Strauss and Zemlinsky Lieder. And, also, Wagner's Wesendonck-Lieder. Yes, there are gentlemen who sing ladies songs, and they do well. Goerne and Schmalcz, for their part, will bring us an intense and gorgeous program, all of Mahler's Lieder: the two cycles with poems by Rückert and a selection of Des Knaben Wunderhorn. And I can’t help thinking about the splendid version of the Kindertotenlieder recorded by Goerne a few years ago.

Albrich and Lusse were also mentioned, and there is one more baritone, Carles Pachon, who will make his debut at the Schubertíada, together with the pianist Berta Brull, with a Catalan song programme. And so we come to the fourth thing I look at in my review of the programme, the details, both small and large, that catch my attention. Undoubtedly, a huge and significant detail is the presence of Catalan song. Because there will be the concert of Pachon and Brull, in the opening concert we will listen to Toldrà, and there will still be a double program, a diptych of Catalan song, with Violeta Alarcón and Teodora Oprișor and with Noctes Cor de Cambra.

Another detail is the half concert that I mentioned at the beginning. On Saturday 30th there will be a chamber concert in which Julius Drake will join forces with the Gerhard Quartet to play the magnificent Brahms' Piano Quintet. In the programme there will also be a Tchaikovsky's Quartet, and Katja Maderer will also join to perform a small selection of Lieder by both composers.

The details are also those composers who are rarely performed. I mentioned Zemlinsky, and in the opening concert we will also hear Viardot, but the composer that draws the most attention in this regard is the Armenian Komitas, whom I presented to you not long ago and I'm sure will charm the audience. In this concert, that of Ruzan Mantashyan and Hilko Dumno there will also be great works like the Tre sonetti di Petrarca by Liszt or the Vier letzte Lieder by Strauss.

I am ending with a detail that has attracted my attention, by omission: the absence of Schumann and Wolf in the programmes. Any song, not one or the other. Artists, what has happened?

As usual, we will end with a song. This 2025 marks the 150th anniversary of Maurice Ravel's birth, and this anniversary is reflected at the Schubertada in the recital of Karg and Rieger, which will perform two of his cycles: Shéhérezade and Cinq mélodies populaires grecques. I talked about the Greek songs here, and then we heard the first one, Le réveil de la mariée. I suggest that we listen to the second, Là-bas, vers l'église, which, as I told you, evokes the massacre on the island of Chios during the Greek war of independence. I chose a special version, the first of two recorded by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, in October 1959, with Karl Engel on the piano. The second version is much later, from 1983, with pianist Hartmut Höll.

May I recommend that you visit www.schubertiada.cat to know the concerts in a more detailed and organized way? All of them, Lied and also chamber music, which will make you happym, too. I hope that we will meet in Vilabertran.