I have played "Death and the Maiden" with my siblings since I was a child, naively and full of joy. Today, with the certainty and knowledge that Schubert's music reflects everything without words: despair, fear, gentleness and comfort.
Naomi Seiler, solo violist
How often music finds words for the unspeakable is shown in the 5th Chamber Concerto: Hugo Wolf composed his “Italian Serenade” for strings as a light-hearted homage to the carefree nature of his youth. If the tone there is one of cheerful courage, his songs show another facet of the composer: in them he tried to unmask people's masking, full of impressive authenticity and deep feeling. His Intermezzo in E flat major, which Wolf wrote a year before the Italian Serenade, is full of elegy and hopeful passion. A composer's life that constantly fluctuated between heaven and abyss. Reflections on one's own life, "being there" and "thinking" can be heard in Aribert Reimann's adaptation of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy's songs. He also composed six interludes for string quartet to connect the songs and add his own language to them. There is no need for many words when it comes to Schubert's “Death and the Maiden”. Shortly before his death, he revisited his most popular songs and processed the best-known motifs in string quartets, including the String Quartet in D minor D 810. The result was what Schubert's friend Moritz von Schwind described as a “melody that remains as if it were from Songs, completely sentimental and completely expressed”.
