Ruth Leon recommends… Schubert in Life & Songs – Wigmore Hall

Schubert in Life & Songs – Wigmore Hall

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  Graham Johnson is probably the world’s leading expert on the composer Franz Schubert and he has made a multi-part biographical series of video lectures under the auspices of Wigmore Hall. Having engaged with Schubert’s music for over five decades as an internationally celebrated performer, scholar and author, Johnson offers unique insights into Schubert’s story, building a vivid picture of this incomparable composer.

These lectures are very detailed, examining Schubert’s life and music, sometimes at great length, indicating the development of the scores and their place in his life. There are some examples, from audio recordings, and some photographs and drawings, but the principal illustrations come from Johnson’s exemplary playing of snatches of the works and his accompaniment of singers. Mostly, he talks.

While what he has to say is fascinating to us Schubert freaks, Johnson is not a professional broadcaster and his delivery can be alternately halting and overly enthusiastic.

There are four parts, all available free on Wigmore Hall’s website.

The first explores Franz Schubert’s early life in Vienna. In the second, which covers the years 1816-1820, Graham Johnson looks at Schubert’s friendship with the poet Johann Baptist Mayrhofer  and his early influence on Schubert’s music.  The third explores the years 1821-1824, one of the happier periods of Schubert’s life, which culminates in the composition of Die schöne Müllerin in 1823, the first of Schubert’s epoch-making song cycles.

In the final instalment, 1825-1828, we learn about the last four years of the composer’s life,  a period of astonishing creativity, before Schubert’s tragic death aged only 31.Even if you’re a die-hard Schubert fanatic, I advise you not to watch these lectures all in one sitting. Each is quite long and all are very dense. Spaced out, one at a time, with frequent pauses, they are very rewarding.

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