23.05.25, 20:00, Kartal Karagedik & Aaron Wajnberg, Schumann

Had Valentine been a thing during the Romantic era, Robert Schumann would have been its champion. From the over 150 songs the man wrote, most of them were dedicated to his wife Clara.

The poems for this song cycle are taken from Heinrich Heine’s Das Buch der Lieder and deal with themes of heartbreak and rejection. Schumann needed only a few days to set them to music. The piano part plays a particularly prominent role in this cycle, which is atypical for those songs, to say the least. Schumann’s wife was a considerably better pianist than he was; who knows if that had anything to do with it?

Whatever the case, Kartal Karagedik and Aaron Wajnberg don’t let it bother them. Kartal’s powerful voice and charismatic stage presence, combined with Aaron’s fiery piano playing, cannot help but produce romantic fireworks.