Ludwig Rellstab was born in Berlin in 1799 to an influential, wealthy and musical family: his father was a pianist and publisher and his mother a singer. Ludwig received what is often called a solid education; he even played piano in several concerts, but eventually, his career turned to arts; he wrote theatre and poetry and was celebrated, above all, as a sharp tongue literary and musical critic with strong opinions.

In March 1933 Karl Weigl was a renowned composer, so successful that by the mid-1930s he had considerably reduced his dedication to teaching because he could practically earn his living from composition. He was born in Vienna in 1881; at his 15, he began to receive lessons from Alexander Zemlinski, a family friend. In 1903, he defended his doctoral thesis; Soon after his dissertation adviser, Guido Adler (one of the fathers of musicology as a scientific discipline) spoke of the young man [...]

A few weeks ago I saw in Instagram some pictures of a new Lied festival in Germany. I realized that many Lied festivals had appeared during the last few years and I thought I could talk about them, to celebrate with readers that, as one of the most usual song-related hashtags says, #dasLiedlebt (the Lied is alive). You never know, maybe we will coincide with some of these events  in a city break. Or maybe we will check the programme and will organize that city break.

The season is about to end, and a few days ago I was going through my notebook to arrange my notes. And I found a note referring to the Schubertíada 2021. Perhaps you remember that in the first post in September I told you that the artists had been particularly opportune with the encores, and a few weeks later I talked about one of them, Abschied von der Erde. Well, I'll talk about another one today.

Franz Schubert wrote many part songs, but if I'm not wrong, he only wrote two duets for female and male voice. We heard one of them some years ago, as part of the series Wilhelm Meister's Songs; it's Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt, a song that most composers consider as a Mignon's song, but in Goethe's novel it is actually a duet of Mignon and the arpist. The other one is, Licht und Liebe, which we're listening this week.