Eine Schubertiade

A reading and song program in which two great voices meet, who participated in the political dialogue of their time in very different ways: Franz Schubert and Karl Kraus.

The Viennese Biedermeier period is often described as a blissful age. The extent to which Franz Schubert took part in the political discourse can no longer be fully ascertained today. What is known is that the initially private performances of Schubert's works, which became known as Schubertiades, were also intended to serve a political and philosophical exchange. In view of a rigid police state and strict censorship, the question arises as to whether the romantic wanderings were merely an escape from a supposedly lost love, or perhaps also a utopian vision of a better world.

The situation with Karl Kraus is quite the opposite: with the publication of his Fackel, he succeeded in becoming an authority on free speech and satirical debate on the social and political conditions of his time in Austria. His public readings filled concert halls and were an important part of the extra-parliamentary discourse between 1899 and 1936. In the Schubertiades, conceived over several seasons, these two Austrian grand masters are juxtaposed and the audience is invited on a joint voyage of discovery.