Foreboding and Fantasy

Donald Macleod continues his exploration of the extraordinary last year of Schubert's life. Featuring excerpts all week from his final song collection Schwanengesang (Swansong).

There are few composers whose genius is so fertile that you can make a whole week of programmes from a single year of their life. Yet even by Franz Schubert's remarkably prolific standards, his last 12 months were utterly extraordinary. As his body entered terminal decline through a mixture of alcoholism and syphilis, masterpiece upon masterpiece poured from his pen: the String Quintet in C, the delirious last three piano sonatas, his Mass in E Flat, the last collection of lieder, posthumously titled "Swansong" - and many more besides. This week Donald Macleod takes us through the last year of Schubert's tragically foreshortened life and death at the age of only 31.

In early 1828, as Schubert's close friends become variously engaged and married, he sinks deeper into loneliness and depression. Donald Macleod explores Schubert's brooding personality, and the ongoing debate regarding his sexuality.

Kriegers Ahnung (Schwanengesang)
James Rutherford, baritone
Eugene Asti, piano

Die Hochzeitsbraten
Marlis Petersen, soprano, Werner Güra, tenor, Konrad Jarnot, bass, Christoph Berner, fortepiano

Der Kreuzzug, D932
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, baritone
Gerald Moore, piano

Fantasy in F minor for piano duet, D940
Leon Fleisher, Katherine Jacobson, piano four hands

Frühlingssehnsucht; Ständchen; Aufenthalt (Schwanengesang)
James Rutherford, baritone
Eugene Asti, piano.