Conceived as a kind of promenade—an inward journey rather than a fixed “programme”—this recital lets the listener wander through late-Romantic poetry and its musical afterglow, from Brahms’s private chiaroscuro to Mahler’s distilled introspection. Brahms opens with the rare timbral poetry of Op. 91, where the viola’s veiled warmth and the voice intertwine in twilight reverie and a cradle-song that feels both tender and strangely archaic. From there, the path deepens into the Vier ernste Gesänge: a final cycle that moves with grave inevitability from darkness toward a hard-won clarity, setting biblical texts with austerity, candour, and a quiet humanism. The surrounding songs—ballad, nocturne, and farewell—extend this “golden” spectrum, from the dramatic shadows of Von ewiger Liebe to the weightless moonlit hush of Die Mainacht. Mahler’s Rückert-Lieder then refine the same existential questions into chamber-like miniatures: fleeting perfume, a breath held at midnight, and the stillness of being “lost to the world,” where expression becomes almost pure thought.