A Celebration of Schumann and Heine
BBC Radio 3, 7/8 June 2006,  19.30 – 21.30

A Rheinland Journey
During the first evening, June 7, Iain Burnside travels down the Rhine, visiting some key locations associated with Heine and Schumann, including Dusseldorf, where Heine was born and where Schumann died, Cologne and the famous Lorelei rock near St Goarshausen, which inspired Heine’s celebrated poem `Die Loreley’.

On the way he talks to Bernd Kortlaender of the Heine Institute and to Volker Kalisch of the Dusseldorf Schumann Musikhochschule, and visits an exhibition in Dusseldorf devoted to relics of Schumann and Heine, including the infamous finger-stretching machine which wrecked Schumann’s hopes of a career as a concert pianist, and the original manuscripts of  Heine poems, Schumann’s Piano Concerto and some of their best-known songs.

Evening I also includes a feature on Heine’s complex relationship with his native Germany, presented by one of the world’s foremost authorities on German literature, Professor Jim Reed of Queen’s College, Oxford.

The Heine/Schumann Song-Settings
Throughout both evenings, six leading exponents of Schumann songs – including Ian Bostridge, Brigitte Fassbaender, Thomas Allen, and Olaf Bar – give their personal view of a  favourite Schumann/Heine setting, read the poems in German and English, and introduce their own recording of the songs.

Each evening climaxes with one of the great Schumann/Heine song-cycles, Evening I with Liederkreis, Op.24, performed by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Christoph Eschenbach; and Evening II with Dichterliebe, Op.49, sung by Fritz Wunderlich.

Drama
Each evening also contains newly-commissioned mini-dramas by playwright Hattie Naylor, directed by Marc Beeby. From the one and only meeting between Heine and Schumann in Munich in 1828, Naylor explores audience reactions to the first performance of Liederkreis, the relationship between Schumann and his wife Clara, and the deaths of both Schumann and Heine from syphilis.

Discussion
On Thursday evening, Iain Burnside is joined in the studio by Judith Chernaik and John Deathridge, who continue to explore the relationship between composer and poet and reflect on some of the issues arising from Wednesday’s programme.

The leading Heine scholar and authority on 19th-century German song, Susan Youens, introduces some of her favourite settings of Heine’s poetry by composers other than Schumann.