Andrè Schuen baritone
Julius Drake piano

Main image: Andrè Schuen © Christolph Köstlin

Internationally acclaimed Lied interpreters Andrè Schuen and Julius Drake present three works steeped in the rich history of the Aldeburgh Festival. Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears performed both Dichterliebe (in 1950) and Liederkreis (1958) together; much more recently, Thomas Larcher was a featured composer for the Festival (2019), while Andrè Schuen here makes his Aldeburgh Festival debut (2024).

The two Romantic cycles stand at the pinnacle of their genre: Liederkreis (“Song cycle”) paints a view of landscape and all it evokes, from brooding mystery to soaring reverie, while Dichterliebe paints the hypersensitive emotions of a “poet’s love”. Thomas Larcher’s Unerzählt (“Untold”) is an intimate new song cycle that sets texts by W.G. Sebald, also known as the author of The Rings of Saturn, a paean to the Suffolk landscape.