With the present programme we want to explore the history of the German Lied throughout a period spanning some 800 years, from that first light of dawn represented by the earliest music scored with modern notation - courtly love songs by Walther von der Vogelweide (1170-1230) and Oswald von Wolkenstein (1377-1445) - down to such present-day emissaries of the Lied tradition as Aribert Reimann and Wolfgang Rihm. In between we find: J.S. Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, Mendelssohn, F.Hensel, Wolf, Berg and Eisler.

The programme is rounded off, however, by the work of a political exile, Kurt Weill: namely, Berlin im Licht. This work appears initially to be no more than a love-song to the future of the electric light bulb: “Turn on the light; so you can see what’s wrong and what is right”. The deeper meaning was soon thrown into relief by the blotting out, within a few years of its composition, of both the light and the right to which Kurt Weill aspired and Germany’s swift descent into the darkness of dictatorship and war. A spark, however, still remained.

Composers: Oswald von Wolkenstein, Walther von der Vogelweide, Johann Sebastian Bach, Johannes Brahms, Wolf, Alban Berg, Aribert Reimann, Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Wolfgang Rihm, Kurt Weill, Franz Schubert, Fanny Hensel, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Robert Schumann, Hanns Eisler.