Schubert: Willkommen und Abschied

Placed under the aegis of Goethe’s poem Willkommen und Abschied (Greeting and parting), the lieder that make up this programme are emblematic of Romantic feeling as it is displayed throughout Schubert’s output: the subject, a traveller in search of meaning and a feeling of oneness with nature, asks himself all his life what place he occupies in the world. To this deeply existential question, the consciousness of the roaming Wanderer can see only one answer, steeped in the atmosphere of Sturm und Drang: ‘I am a stranger everywhere.’