A long-established duo returns to Elmslie House to perform the first of Schubert’s renowned song-cycles. Previous programmes included songs by Mozart and Beethoven, towering figures who dominated the song-world into which Schubert emerged, in their shared home-city. The most recent recital they gave featured works by the Mendelssohn siblings, Fanny and Felix, and as it happens there is an intriguing link between Fanny and the genesis of Die schöne Müllerin.

The poems set by Schubert in the cycle found their origin in a creative Berlin house party of young artists and intellectuals, in 1816. The poet, Wilhelm Müller, built on a core of works written there as part of the entertainment and inspired, at least in part, by his unrequited love for one of his fellow guests, Luise Hensel (Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel’s sister-in-law).

Schubert took twenty of the poems in 1823, the year of his devastating health crisis, and forged an inexhaustible, enduring masterpiece. Youthful hope, love, frustration, pain and loss are evoked with piercing insight and expressiveness, and transmuted into art of a poignant, transcendent beauty. It has been speculated that engaging with its intense narrative arc, in a cathartic process, may have saved Schubert from his own intensifying  despair at this point, and so made possible the treasures of the following five years.

John Barker and Helen Cawthorne performed both this song-cycle and Winterreise in London for the Schubert Society of Britain, earlier in their careers, and were invited to return with Die schöne Müllerin for the Society’s anniversary celebrations. Please visit www.helencawthorne.com for more information about the performers.

Tickets may also be bought in advance at the Tourist Information Office and, if available, on the door from 2.30pm (cash only, please). Unfortunately, late admission will not be possible, due to the unbroken character of the cycle.

[also at Bristol Music Club on 25th February and Burgh House, Hampstead on 4th March]