Katowice Culture Nature Festival / Expulsion from the Paradise of Love / Bostridge / Giorgini / Schubert - NOSPR

The German poet Wilhelm Müller – as many a youth of his generation – was fascinated by Romanticism and dreamt about a community of the lyrical and the musical. Indeed, history remembered him predominantly as the lyricist of two famous song cycles by Franz Schubert. While Müller did not show a talent as great as Goethe’s or Schiller’s (even though he influenced Heine’s maturing imagination), the feelings and senses found in his poetry still provided Schubert with images and motives suggestive enough to show the composer new and surprising shades. In the twenty songs that form "The Fair Maid of the Mill" (1823), Müller and Schubert tell us the story of a young apprentice in search of work, who falls in love with a miller’s beautiful daughter; yet he fails in his efforts to win her heart, defeated by his rival – a hunter. He shares both his enthusiasm and his pain with his trusted confidant, the stream. Thus, friendly arcadian nature becomes something more than a mute witness to the protagonist’s drama.

It is in the very same year in which The Fair Maid of the Mill was created that Schubert reaches for the text of a ballad by his close friend, Franz von Schober. The image created in Viola makes nature less of a poetic setting and more of an apt metaphor of human fate. The titular lyrical heroine, symbolizing purity and hope, awaits nuptials with her beloved – Spring – in vain. Once more in Schubert’s music, the beauty of life is overshadowed by suffering.

Bartłomiej Barwinek

Concert duration: approximately 75 minutes

Festival Passes are available for purchase. A Pass for a minimum of four concerts offers a 20% discount on the total ticket price. When purchasing a Pass for at least six concerts, the discount increases to 25%. Passes are available exclusively at the NOSPR ticket offices and by telephone reservation.

Regular and discounted tickets are available for all festival concerts. Holders of the Katowice Resident Card are entitled to a 20% discount, also valid for online purchases.