Festival The Art of Song Maastricht

From 23 to 28 February 2027, Maastricht will once again be devoted to the art of song during The Art of Song Maastricht. The festival brings together leading international musicians and emerging young talent in the historic heart of the city. Under the theme Pilgrimage of Song, song is approached as a journey through languages, cultures and generations: from poet to composer, from score to performer and ultimately to you, the listener. Themes such as travelling, longing, the search for love and melancholic memories return again and again. Join us on this musical pilgrimage through special historic venues around the Vrijthof.

In 2027, it will be two hundred years since the death of Ludwig van Beethoven, one of the most influential composers in the history of music. Franz Schubert admired him deeply. Schubert was among the torchbearers at Beethoven’s funeral. It is a striking symbol of the transition from one generation to the next. In this recital, the two composers enter into a musical dialogue.

The programme brings together songs by Beethoven and Schubert that share thematic affinities with An die ferne Geliebte. Beethoven’s cycle of the same name lies at the heart of the recital. The work is a milestone in the development of art song and is regarded as the first song cycle: a sequence of interconnected songs that together form one narrative.

With Schubert, the song cycle reached new heights in Die schöne Müllerin, Winterreise and Schwanengesang. The latter collection was assembled by his publisher after Schubert’s death and contains settings of three different poets. This recital includes a selection of the Rellstab songs. Ludwig Rellstab’s poems had originally been offered to Beethoven; after his death, they came into Schubert’s hands, and he set them to music. Exactly how this transfer took place is not entirely clear. That uncertainty makes the thought all the more intriguing that these texts quite literally travelled from poet to composer and from one generation to the next.
An intriguing detail is that both Beethoven and Schubert experienced unrequited and unattainable love.

Pianist Iain Burnside is one of the leading international specialists in art song, with more than sixty recordings and collaborations with singers including Joyce DiDonato, Lawrence Brownlee and Roderick Williams. Baritone Vincent Kusters has received awards at several international song competitions and has worked with pianists including Julius Drake and Charles Spencer.

Before the recital, cultural historian Dick Disselkoen places the programme in its historical and literary context.