“This programme is like a vast inner journey, a kind of musical narrative where the pieces dialogue to tell the story of a single quest: the quest for a peace that is impossible to attain fully in a world haunted by doubt, grief, ghosts and the desire for the absolute. More than a succession of scores, the concert is conceived as a wandering through the various states of the German Romantic soul.” (Raphaël Pichon)
Sixty years separate Gruppe aus dem Tartarus, composed by Franz Schubert in 1816, from Johannes Brahms’s First Symphony, premiered in 1876. Between these two dates lies Richard Wagner’s Siegfried-Idyll, composed to mark the birth of their son Siegfried and presented to Cosima for her birthday on 25 December 1870. Three works, three generations, three moments in German Romanticism. But also a single story: the legacy left by Schubert to all Germanic music of the 19th century. Behind the young Schubert setting Schiller to music, behind Wagner gifting his wife a secret score played in the early hours on the staircase of their villa in Tribschen, behind Brahms finally completing the symphony he had dreaded writing for over twenty years, the same artistic lineage emerges.
Concert broadcast live on France Musique on 15 July 2026.
Programme
Franz Schubert (1797–1828), Der Doppelgänger based on a poem by Heinrich Heine (orch. Franz Liszt)
Franz Schubert, Symphony No. 8 in B minor, D. 759, known as the ‘Unfinished’
Franz Schubert, Gruppe aus dem Tartarus based on a poem by Friedrich Schiller, Op. 24 No. 1, D. 583 (orch. Johannes Brahms)
Franz Schubert, Symphony in B minor, D. 759, known as the ‘Unfinished’ Symphony
Franz Schubert, Nacht und Träume, based on a poem by Matthäus von Collin, Op. 43 No. 2, D. 827 (orch. Max Reger)
Richard Wagner (1813–1883), Siegfried-Idyll
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Johannes Brahms (1833–1897), Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 68
