The 50th Schubertiade Anniversary Celebration Celebrating Gerd Nachbauer’s Founding Dream

by Georg Predota 

 

In 2025, the Schubertiade festival celebrates its 50th anniversary, marking half a century of devotion to the music of Franz Schubert and the rich tradition of chamber music and lieder. What began as a modest series of concerts in the quaint Austrian town of Hohenems has blossomed into one of the world’s most prestigious and beloved musical events.

Gerd Nachbauer © Bernd Hofmeister

To be sure, the festival has grown from intimate gatherings into a global phenomenon, drawing tens of thousands of music lovers annually to experience its unique blend of exceptional performances and idyllic Alpine settings.

To celebrate this golden jubilee of enduring appeal and unwavering commitment to artistic excellence, Interlude spoke to Gerd Nachbauer, who founded the Schubertiade Hohenems alongside Hermann Prey in 1976.

Prégardien/ Drake: “Schubertiade Hohenems 2022” 

Origins

The first Schubertiade Hohenems, 1976

It all started with Gerd Nachbauer inviting Hermann Prey to participate in a small yearly festival situated in the town of Hohenems. As Nachbauer explained, “during the planning phase of a song recital scheduled for June 1975, Hermann Prey’s secretary Christian Lange suggested that this concert could serve as a test for a larger project associated with the names Prey and Schubert.”

This initial proposal for a concert linking Prey with Schubert’s music planted the seed that eventually blossomed into the renowned Schubertiade. The principle aim was to present Schubert’s complete oeuvre over a period of 12 years. After 2 years of planning, the first Schubertiade began on 8 May 1976 with a song recital by Hermann Prey accompanied by Leonard Hokanson.

Rennert/Johnson: “Schubertiade Schwarzenerg 2022” 

Vision

The original vision foresaw the performances of the complete Schubert oeuvre in chronological order. For obvious reasons, this idea was not entirely practical nor feasible, and the primary emphasis remained on solo performances. In essence, the early years of the Schubertiade focused on simplicity and on communicating the intimacy of Schubert’s solo vocal compositions.

Nevertheless, the idea of bringing Schubert’s unknown or then-inaccessible compositions to the general public persisted. As Gerd Nachbauer noted, “a significant portion of Schubert’s compositions had remained under the radar,” and the Schubertiade now offered a vital channel to share these works with a wider audience. One aspect of that vision was to showcase Schubert’s music in larger concert halls, expanding beyond the traditional limits of smaller venues.

Youn/Karg/Bedenko: “Schubertiade Hohenems 2018” 

Venue Choices

Markus Sittikus Hall in Hohenems, Austria

Currently, the Schubertiade is held in two unique locations, in Hohenems and Schwarzenberg. Establishing these venues, however, was no small task. The Markus Sittikus Hall, named after the Salzburg prince-archbishop Markus Sittikus von Hohenems, is housed in a building dating from 1913. It was completely renovated by the Schubertiade, and as Gerd Nachbauer explained, “on account of its acoustical qualities, it is now one of the world’s best halls for the performance of chamber music and Lieder.”

The idyllic village of Schwarzenberg has been an important venue for the Schubertiade since 1994. The “Angelika Kauffmann Hall” is named after the exceptional Neoclassical painter whose father brought her to their ancestral home in Schwarzenberg following her mother’s death. Kauffmann is one of only two female painters among the founding members of the Royal Academy in London, and the hall in her honour is built in a simple timber construction and also offers perfect acoustic conditions. In fact, its fantastic sound properties have been compared to London’s Wigmore Hall.

Arcayürek & Bushakevitz: “Schubertiade Schwarzenberg 2024”

Cultural Frame

A chamber music concert in Markus Sittikus Hall

Over the last 5 decades, the Schubertiade has grown from an intimate celebration of Franz Schubert’s music into a renowned international event, drawing musicians, scholars, and enthusiasts to its locations in Hohenems and Schwarzenberg. It has evolved into an organic event of creativity fuelled by the dedication of Gerd Nachbauer, artists, and the community.

This organic development extends beyond the festival proper to a collection of museums that naturally complement the musical focus. Established by Gerd Nachbauer, the Schubert Museum offer immersive explorations of Schubert’s life, works, and reception, while the Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Walter Legge, Stefan Zweig and Nibelungen Museums enrich the cultural tapestry with festival-related and local heritage.

Schubertiade 2025

Franz Schubert’s music, for Gerd Nachbauer, “goes straight to the heart, and conveys something deeply moving and emotionally resonant.” The 2025 Schubertiade is set to celebrate Nachbauer’s founding dream and Schubert’s enduring legacy.

Interlude will be on site for the Schubertiade Hohenems from 10-14 July 2025; please check back soon and often for updates, interviews, concert reviews, and festival-related activities.

Schubert – The Wanderer

by The Sokolover, Interlude

Schubert’s music articulates the ineffable, conveys the unspoken, and encapsulates a world of its own. Most of the time, it is imbued with desolation, poignancy, and nostalgia, whereas the occasional tinges of optimism, more often than not, are merely a remembrance of the unattainable past (or, in German, Sehnsucht) – happiness is but the surface of despair, as Alfred Brendel aptly put it. Meanwhile, its ability to express something so universal yet personal gives solace to one as if saying, “You are not alone”.

The Wanderer over the Sea of Fog (1818), by Caspar David Friedrich

It perhaps lacks the spirituality of Bach’s music, the sanguinity of Mozart, or the heroism of Beethoven. But that isn’t the point of Schubert’s music, for he never sought to transcend above or eschew human conditions. Instead, what we hear is a frank acknowledgement of our fragility and vulnerability.

His Impromptu Op. 90 No. 1 in C minor begins with a proclamation of G octaves. This recurs throughout the work and haunts us with a sense of threat and inescapable fate, bringing Erlkönig to mind. While the sections with duet singing (3:25, 6:45) contain probably the most gorgeous melody Schubert ever wrote (where else can such bittersweetness be found?), it only offers momentary consolation as the foreboding G octave repeats itself (4:05, 7:12). The Impromptu does end in C major, but are the conflicts resolved? Not really.

Franz Schubert

On the other hand, Impromptu Op. 90 No. 3 in G-flat major, a lied ohne worte in its effect, exudes such radiant warmth and embracing tenderness, undeterred by the troubled central section. What an exquisite combination of simplicity, intimacy and haunting beauty.

That said, and apparently, Schubert’s music isn’t all mellow or sentimental. Just listen to the stabbing pain and horror in his Der Doppelgänger, or the frenzied, demonic outcry that defies boundaries in Andantino from his Piano Sonata D. 959, both of which are almost psychologically traumatic and nakedly reveal another dimension of Schubert’s persona, and also that of human experience.

Central to Schubert’s aesthetics is a potent sense of solitude. He was a rootless loner who felt attached to nowhere, a poet of solitude, and a true wanderer – it could hardly be a coincidence that he wrote three Lieder on Der Wanderer (D. 493, D. 649, D. 870), not to mention the Winterreise. The poems on which these Lieder are based offer a unique sensibility to the psyche of a wanderer, or that of Schubert. Froh umgeben, doch alleine (there is joy all around, yet I am alone) – it couldn’t be better concluded. 

Georg Philipp Schmidt von Lübeck

Der Wanderer (by Georg Lübeck)

The Wanderer (English translation by Richard Wigmore)

Ich komme vom Gebirge her, Es dampft das Tal, es braust das Meer. Ich wandle still, bin wenig froh, Und immer fragt der Seufzer: wo? Die Sonne dünkt mich hier so kalt, Die Blüte welk, das Leben alt, Und was sie reden, leerer Schall, Ich bin ein Fremdling überall. Wo bist du, mein geliebtes Land? Gesucht, geahnt und nie gekannt! Das Land, das Land, so hoffnungsgrün, Das Land, wo meine Rosen blühn, Wo meine Freunde wandeln gehn, Wo meine Toten auferstehn, Das Land, das meine Sprache spricht, O Land, wo bist du? Ich wandle still, bin wenig froh, Und immer fragt der Seufzer: wo? Im Geisterhauch tönt’s mir zurück: „Dort, wo du nicht bist, dort ist das Glück!“

I come from the mountains; the valley steams, the ocean roars. I wander, silent and joyless, and my sighs for ever ask: Where? Here the sun seems so cold, the blossom faded, life old, and men’s words mere hollow noise; I am a stranger everywhere. Where are you, my beloved land? Sought, dreamt of, yet never known! The land so green with hope, the land where my roses bloom, Where my friends walk, where my dead ones rise again, the land that speaks my tongue, O land, where are you? I wander, silent and joyless, and my sighs for ever ask: Where? In a ghostly whisper the answer comes: ‘There, where you are not, is happiness!’

(Source: https://oxfordsong.org/song/der-wanderer)

Friedrich Schlegel

Der Wanderer (by Friedrich von Schlegel)

The Wanderer (English translation by Richard Wigmore)

Wie deutlich des Mondes Licht Zu mir spricht, Mich beseelend zu der Reise: „Folge treu dem alten Gleise, Wähle keine Heimat nicht. Ew’ge Plage Bringen sonst die schweren Tage; Fort zu andern Sollst du wechseln, sollst du wandern, Leicht entfliehend jeder Klage.“ Sanfte Ebb’ und hohe Flut, Tief im Mut, Wandr’ ich so im Dunkeln weiter, Steige mutig, singe heiter, Und die Welt erscheint mir gut. Alles reine Seh’ ich mild im Widerscheine, Nichts verworren In des Tages Glut verdorren: Froh umgeben, doch alleine.

How clearly the moon’s light speaks to me, inspiring me on my journey: ‘Follow faithfully the old track, choose nowhere as your home, lest bad times bring endless cares. You will move on, and go forth to other places, lightly casting off all grief.’ Thus, with gentle ebb and swelling flow deep within my soul, I walk on in the darkness. I climb boldly, singing merrily, and the world seems good to me. I see all things clearly in their gentle reflection. Nothing is blurred or withered in the heat of the day: there is joy all around, yet I am alone.

(Source: https://oxfordsong.org/song/der-wanderer-2)

Looking back at his late piano sonatas, some would argue: isn’t the gaiety and exuberance in the finales of D. 959 and D. 960 undeniable? Well, it could be a self-affirmation in the face of impending demise, a delusional triumph against his fate, an imagined joy that didn’t belong to him – or a joy that finally belonged to him, but in another world.

Musings on Schubert

by Anson Yeung

To start with, I have to confess that although I have long been fond of Schubert, he hasn’t been among my “favourites” (if such a term is appropriate). Somehow, I have found a barrier between Schubert and me that prevented me from understanding the true intent of his music until recently.

Schubert at the Piano – Gustav Klimt (1899)

Schubert is probably the only composer who can create music that is even more heart-wrenching and disturbing in major keys than in minor keys. An example I would immediately think of would be his Klavierstücke No. 2 in E-flat major. Starting with a gentle and intimate atmosphere, it then transits into the tumultuous first trio and later the more poignant second trio in A-flat minor. There’s a moment where the music suddenly detours into A-flat major (a dominant seventh technically) for merely one bar and then returns to the original tonality. Compare 6:36 and 9:07 in the recording below – this never fails to give me goosebumps, as if there’s finally a gleam of hope, but it’s extinguished in a matter of seconds.

Figure 1

The bar highlighted in blue appears for the first time in A-flat minor.

Figure 2

This time it is in A-flat major but returns to the original tonality after one bar.

Schubert is always a complex figure, with his music oozing so much nostalgia, hope, loss, grief, frustration, and many more. All these emotions are what make human beings fragile, but at the same time, what make us human. His music is often suffused with bittersweetness, in the sense that the apparently more joyous moments are, in fact, reminiscences of the unattainable past, while the music often draws us back to the darker side as if an interrupted dream.

Paul Lewis illuminated Schubert’s emotional landscape with an uncompromising interpretation of his sonatas in Hong Kong. In the Sonata in A major, D.664, I experienced embracing warmth, a sense of relief despite tinges of sorrow, and the imagery of rustic scenes, with the third movement full of buoyancy and a dancing pulse. On the other hand, Schubert’s neuroses and anguish fully came through in the Sonata in A minor, D. 845, coupled with such abandon and immensely white-hot passion from Lewis. 

In my interview with Paul Lewis, he aptly described the “lack of resolution” in Schubert’s music, with which I greatly sympathise. Schubert often brings up conflicts without offering an answer, leaving us in a state of ambivalence. That’s something that makes his music close to my heart – after all, not everything in the world has or requires a resolution or an answer. Unlike Beethoven, Schubert accepted his fate as it was, and such an acceptance is most evident in his late sonatas.  

Chopin once said, ‘Bach is an astronomer, discovering the most marvellous stars. Beethoven challenges the universe. I only try to express the soul and the heart of man.’ We can perhaps draw a parallel here. Schubert neither explored the topics of divinity and religion nor attempted to fight against his fate. Instead, it is all about the deepest, often ineffable human emotions, which is probably why listening to his music can provoke such a probing ache.

As with Schubert’s music, this piece of musing (or nonsensical mumbling for some) shall come to an end without a resolution, which is paradoxically yet to be discovered in his music per se.

Franz Schubert (1797-1828): A Piano Duet Tribute

by Georg Predota, Interlude

It might come as a surprise, but Franz Schubert wrote almost as much piano music for four hands as for two. His thirty-four compositions in this medium range from his earliest surviving music, the Fantasie D. 48, to his Rondo in A Major finished in the summer of 1828. A scholar writes, “no composer ever approached the piano duet with the seriousness Schubert did, and his corpus of four-hand pieces stands as the apex of the genre.”

Franz Schubert

Throughout the 19th century, piano music for four hands played an important role in the home. Since larger ensembles could only be afforded by the upper classes and the aristocracy, salons everywhere sounded with music for four hands, be it arrangements of works written for larger ensembles, the operatic stage, or original compositions.

For Schubert, the four-hand set-up seemed ideally suited to his temperament as “it was a congenial form of music-making that was emblematic in Biedermeier culture as an activity of friendship and sociability.” These works were a staple in Schubertiade’s gatherings, and they ranked among his most successful publications during his lifetime. As we commemorate Schubert’s passing on 19 November at the age of 31, let us celebrate his genius by exploring some of his genial and charming original works for piano 4-hands.

Franz Schubert wrote to a friend, “Every night when I go to bed, I hope that I may never wake again, and every morning renews my grief.” Yet, it was music that gave him purpose. As he wrote, “I compose every morning, and when one piece is done, I begin another.” In May and June 1828, Schubert composed the Allegro in A Minor, D 947 and the Rondo in A Major, D 951, as a possible two-movement sonata.

The Rondo was published in December 1828, a month after his death, but the Allegro only appeared in print in 1840. Anton Diabelli added the heading “Lebensstürme” (The storms of life), presumably with an eye on prospective customers. This trite sobriquet does not prepare us for the depth of Schubert’s music, as harmonic and structural shifts create subtleties of light and shade. Schubert was the undisputed master of compressing emotional complexity, joy, sorrow, friendship, and solace into a simple change of key.

Turbulent minor chords prepare for an opening statement that emerges from within a deep silence. An introspective melody murmurs in the unsmiling minor key, but the serenity of the second theme, sounding a distant chorale, leaves all storms far behind. However, Schubert has led the music into a highly remote territory, with the harmonic ground shifting restlessly. Suddenly, the music breaks off mid-stream, and an unceremonious plunge takes us to the central development stage. And while the radiant chorale takes centre stage in the recapitulation, the movement ends in the stormy minor key. 

With the “Lebensstürme” Allegro and the “Grand Rondeau,” Schubert completely transcended the confines of the salon and, in the process, wrote highly original and wonderful music for piano duet. The Schubert biographer Christopher H. Gibbs writes, “Such innovations may explain why his attraction to the medium continued even after his energies shifted increasingly to large-scale instrumental works. Indeed, the audacious harmonic and structural adventures in his finest keyboard duets may have pointed the way to orchestral projects that he did not live to realise…The late piano duets exquisitely merge Schubert’s lyrical gifts with daring formal structures.”

Franz Liszt called Schubert “the most poetic musician who had ever lived,” and musicologist Alfred Einstein called the A-Major Rondo D. 951 “the apotheosis of all Schubert compositions for four hands.” The piece is modelled on the lyrical second movement of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in E minor, Op. 90. It mirrors the tranquillity of mood, the layout, and the harmonic pattern.

The Rondo theme is quietly accompanied by running 16th notes and immediately sounds an octave higher. This theme appears in various keys and registers throughout, and it is interspersed with episodes and subsidiary themes derived from it. A slightly stormy section in C Major is quickly cast aside, and the Rondo theme returns in the cello register to conclude the movement in a warm and quiet manner.

Variations in B-flat Major, D. 968a

Caroline Esterhazy

For Schubert and his friends, four-hand piano music was a natural part of convivial evenings. This repertoire was almost exclusively destined for the private amateur salon market, and the prospects for having such pieces published were higher than they were for solo piano music, specifically when it came to works of the ambitious scope Schubert wanted to write.

Presumably written in 1818 or 1824, Schubert’s Variations D. 968a for piano four hands is one of series of compositions written for the two daughters of Count Johann Karl Esterházy. Schubert was engaged as a music tutor to the two girls and spent two summers at the Count’s estate at Zseliz in Hungary. Schubert wrote to his friend Moritz von Schwind, “I have composed a big sonata and variations for four hands; the latter is enjoying great applause here, but since I don’t quite trust the taste of the Hungarians, I’ll let you and the Viennese decide about them.”

A curiously pompous introduction terminates in a short cadenza for the primo pianist, and it is followed by a simple theme of Schubertian charm. The variations get progressively more brilliant, with Schubert accelerating the rhythms and adding rapid figuration. The third variation is aptly marked “Brilliante,” and it is followed by the mock solemnity of a slower variation. The merry finale features folk-like elements, including a yodelling call. It has been called “one of Schubert’s most jovial and overtly entertaining pieces.”

Sonata for Piano 4-hands in C Major, D. 812 “Grand Duo”

The big sonata Schubert mentioned to Moritz von Schwind turned out to be one of the most monumental and powerful achievements of the composer. Generally known as the “Grand Duo,” the work caused a bit of confusion. As Robert Schumann wrote in 1838, “I thought at first it was a symphony transcribed for piano, but the original manuscript on which Schubert has written Sonata for four hands would suggest I was wrong.”

Schumann continues, “I say I would suggest, for I am still not convinced of my error. A composer as prolific as Schubert may well, in haste, have written Sonata when what he really had in mind was a symphony. Knowing his style and his manner of writing for the piano and comparing this work with his other sonatas where the purest pianistic character is evident, I cannot but think that it was composed for the orchestra. You can hear the strings, the woodwind, the tutti, some solos, the drum roll; the symphonic form in all its breadth and depth.”

Joachim’s orchestration of Schubert’s Grand Duo

Joseph Joachim went ahead and orchestrated the “Grand Duo” in 1855, and the musicologist and composer Donald Francis Tovey included this orchestration in his book analysing symphonies. He wrote, “there is not a trace of piano style in the work.” More recently, the Sonata has been more readily appreciated as a piano work with orchestral effects, one of many other piano works by Schubert that have been called “symphonies in disguise.” 

Actually, Schubert wrote two sonatas for piano 4-hands. While the “Grand Duo” dates from 1824, the “Grande Sonata” originated in 1818. The two works couldn’t be more different, as the “Grande Sonata” seems very close to the world of Mozart, “the unique combination of purity, subtlety and emotional richness of whose music was an abiding source of wonder to Schubert.”

A grand opening gesture, a wonderful curtain-raiser, proceeds to an easy-going theme. The contrasting second subject sounds in a remote key, but it cheekily meanders back to the correct key just in time to close the exposition. Schubert also introduces a charming new melody in the middle of the development, which will be echoed in the beautiful slow movement. The Rondo finale takes a renewed look at Mozart with a dramatic, almost operatic middle section and replaces the development.

The work stems from Schubert’s time at the Esterházy’s estate at Zseliz in Hungary, and it found the composer in a jovial mood. He writes, “I am in the best of health. I live and compose like a god, as though indeed nothing else in the world were possible… I am really alive at last, thank God!”

Polonaises, D. 599

Schubert’s Polonaise

Schubert published a couple of sets of Polonaises in 1826 and 1827. The young Robert Schumann, not yet seventeen, was already reviewing for a Frankfurt publication and wrote of “most original and very richly melodious little movements… The execution is difficult at times on account of the sometimes surprising and sometimes far-fetched modulations. Thoroughly recommended.”

Schumann called them “romantic rainbows over a sublimely slumbering universe,” as Schubert turned the Polish courtly ceremonial style of music into his own delightful and sparkling character pieces. The Polonaises for piano 4-hands range from light and airy to robust and balletic, but all unfold in three-part form and venture into unexpected keys.

Fugue in E minor of Piano 4-hands, D. 952

Schubert’s Fugue in E minor

In 1828, Schubert and his friend Franz Lachner were invited by Johann Schikh, the editor of a Viennese magazine for art, literature, theatre, and fashion, for a country outing to Baden, near Vienna. Apparently, Schikh told Schubert, “Tomorrow morning, we shall go to Heiligenkreuz to hear the famous organ there. Perhaps you could both compose a small piece and perform it there?” Schubert suggested the composition of a four-hand fugue, which was completed by midnight.As Lachner reports, “on the next day, at 6 in the morning, we travelled to Heiligenkreuz where the fugues were performed in the presence of several monks.” The fugue subject had already appeared in Schubert’s counterpoint lesson with Simon Sechter, and it might well have been his very last completed composition. As he wrote to a friend eight days later, “I am ill. I have had nothing to eat or drink for eleven days now and can only wander feebly and uncertainly between armchair and bed.”

Fantasie in F minor, D 940

Schubert composed a number of Fantasies, but the one in F minor, D 940, is surely one of the best-loved works in the piano duet literature. But what is more, it is widely considered one of Schubert’s greatest masterpieces. Dedicated to Countess Caroline Esterházy, this work completely leaves the sphere of informal social gatherings. During the first months of his last year of life, Schubert created a work of almost symphonic form, whose elegiac atmosphere at the beginning sets the tone for the entire work. Schubert scholar John Reed called it “a work which in its structural organisation, economy of form, and emotional depth represents Schubert’s art at its peak.”

Although Schubert called it a Fantasie and the work unfolds in one continuous flow of music, it might well be structured in the manner of a sonata in four movements. The opening “Allegretto molto moderato” evolves from a murmuring accompaniment that features a theme of halting rhythms and chirping grace notes. When Schubert almost hypnotically repeats the theme, the music has effortlessly shifted from F minor to F Major. The rhythmically conceived second subject drives directly into a powerful “Largo.” We move directly into the “Allegro vivace,” a sparkling scherzo of nostalgia followed by a delicate trio. The trio breaks suddenly, and the music eventually plunges into a complex fugue, which takes us to the point of despair. The concluding section brings back the music from the very beginning, and contrapuntal complexity drives the Fantasie to its climax. It all ends with some heart-rendering chords that bring this masterwork to a quiet close.

A scholar writes, “that a legacy of such beauty should have been bequeathed to all humanity as a result of Schubert’s pain and suffering is a miracle in itself.” And Schubert himself commented in the final moments of his life, “the product of my genius and my misery, and that which I have written in my greatest distress, is that which the world seems to like best.”

Franz Schubert died in Vienna on November 19, 1828, and he was buried at his own request near Beethoven. Schubert had carried the torch at Beethoven’s funeral a year before his own death.

Moved to Tears

by Frances Wilson, Interlude

Music has the power to tug at the heartstrings, and evoking emotion is the main purpose of music – whether it’s joy or sadness, excitement or meditation. A certain melody or line of a song, a falling phrase, the delayed gratification of a resolved harmony – all these factors make music interesting, exciting, calming, pleasurable and moving.

Tears and chills – or “tingles” – on hearing music are a physiological response which activates the parasympathetic nervous system, as well as the reward-related brain regions of the brain. Studies have shown that around 25% of the population experience this reaction to music. But it’s much more than a pure physiological response. Classical music in particular steers a mysterious path through our senses, triggering unexpected and powerful emotional responses, which sometimes result in tears – and not just tears of sadness.

Tears flow spontaneously in response to a release of tension, perhaps at the end of a particularly engrossing performance. Certain pieces of music can remind us of past events, experiences and people, triggering memories and associated emotions. At other times, we may feel tearfully awestruck in the face of the greatness or sheer beauty of the music.

This last response has a name – Stendhal Syndrome – and while the syndrome is more commonly associated with art, it can be applied equally to the powerful emotional reaction which music provokes.

A psychosomatic disorder, Stendhal Syndrome, or hyperkulturemia, causes rapid heartbeat, dizziness, sweating, disorientation, fainting, tears and confusion when someone is looking at artwork (or hearing a piece of music) with which he or she connects emotionally on a profound level. The phenomenon, also called ‘Florence Syndrome’, is named after the French author Marie-Henri Beyle , who wrote under the pen-name of ‘Stendhal’. While visiting the Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence, he became overcome with emotion and noted his reactions:

“I was in a sort of ecstasy, from the idea of being in Florence, close to the great men whose tombs I had seen. Absorbed in the contemplation of sublime beauty … I reached the point where one encounters celestial sensations … Everything spoke so vividly to my soul.”

While there is some debate as to whether the syndrome actually exists, there is no doubt that music (and art and literature) can have a very profound effect on our emotional responses.

Certain pieces are well-known tear-jerkers, including:

Mahler: Adagio from Symphony No. 9 in D

Schubert: Winterreise

Personal tragedy portrayed in hauntingly beautiful music.

Elgar: Cello Concerto

Wistful soaring melodies and a sense of hope and anguish, particularly in the final movement, this is Elgar’s tragic masterpiece. 

Allegri: Miserere

Ethereal chords combined with plainchant, the exquisite simplicity and beauty of this music is guaranteed to set the tears flowing. 

Rachmaninoff: Slow movement, Piano Concerto No. 2

Put simply, this is sublimely beautiful music.

19 January: Saint-Saëns’ Cello Concerto No. 1 Was Premiered

By Georg Predota, Interlude

Saint-Saëns, 1875

On 19 January 1873, the French cellist, viola da gamba player and instrument maker Auguste Tolbecque premiered Camille Saint-Saëns’ Cello Concerto No. 1 in A minor, Op. 33, a work specifically composed for him. Tolbecque was a close personal friend, and the solo cellist of the Conservatoire orchestra. He was a composer himself, and also a published music historian. Tolbecque was influential in the performance of early music as he conducted research into historical instruments and their restoration.

Saint-Saëns as a boy, 1846

His compositions tend to be light in style and influenced by Mendelssohn and Schumann. Tolbecque retired before he was able to produce a recording, and he does not figure prominently in the review of the Saint-Saëns concerto published in the Revue et gazette musicale de Paris immediately after the premiere. “If Mr. Saint-Saëns should decide to continue in this vein,” the reviewer wrote, “which is consistent with his violin concerto, the Trio in F, and other works of lesser significance, he is certain to recover many of the votes that he lost with his all-too-obvious divergence from classicism and the tendencies in a number of his recent works. We must say that the Cello Concerto seems to us to be a beautiful and good work of excellent sentiment and perfect cohesiveness, and as usual the form is of greatest interest.” 

Auguste Tolbecque

At the time Saint-Saëns composed his first Cello Concerto he had already reached the age of thirty-seven. He was highly regarded in French musical circles, but as a composer he was still searching for his breakthrough work. He clearly possessed a mastery of compositional technique, and his ease, ingenuity, naturalness and productivity was compared to “a tree producing leaves.” Although he was living in a period of extreme musical experimentations, Saint-Saëns remained stubbornly traditional. Romain Rolland wrote in 1908, “He brings into the midst of our modern restlessness something of the sweetness and clarity of past periods, something that seems like fragments of a vanished world.” In his first Cello Concert, Saint-Saëns takes a deliberate stance away from what the critic calls “the (modernist) tendencies in a number of his recent works.” His unmistakable melodic charm and characteristic freshness and vitality are clothed in a formal clarity that undoubtedly accounts for the widespread popularity the 1st Cello Concerto enjoyed from the very onset. 

Opening of Saint-Saëns’ Cello Concerto No. 1

For Saint-Saëns, “form was the essence of art.” As he once wrote, “the music-lover is most of all enchanted by expressiveness and passion, but that is not the case for the artist. An artist who does not feel a deep sense of personal satisfaction with elegant lines, harmonious colors or a perfect progression of chords has no comprehension of true art.” As the anonymous critic had written after the premiere, “it should be clarified that this is in reality a “Concertstück,” since the three relatively short movements run together. The orchestra plays such a major role that it gives the work symphonic character, a tendency present in every concerto of any significance since Beethoven.” Saint-Saëns might have been looking at Franz Liszt, a composer he greatly admired, as the three movements of the concerto are interconnected. In fact, the principle theme is sounded in legato running triplets, and it appears in all movements of the concerto. 

Saint-Saëns, circa 1880

Sir Donald Francis Tovey later wrote “Here, for once, is a violoncello concerto in which the solo instrument displays every register without the slightest difficulty in penetrating the orchestra.” The orchestra clearly plays a role beyond that of mere accompaniment, “as this work never succumbs to the imbalance frequently encountered in cello concertos whereby for long stretches the soloist is seen bowing furiously but is scarcely heard.” As Saint-Saëns tellingly suggested, “Virtuosity gives a composer wings with which to soar above the commonplace and the platitudinous.” Uniting the lyrical quality of the cello with instrumental virtuosity and carful orchestral scoring produced a work valued by performers and loved by audiences. But what is more, a good many composers, including Shostakovich and Rachmaninoff considered Saint-Saëns’ Cello Concerto No. 1 to be the greatest of all cello concertos.