Summer Special 🚲 Franz Schubert: a passionate traveller and solitary wanderer

Lukas Sternath’s concert on 5 November at the Rudolfinum is dedicated to the theme of the pilgrimage. Franz Schubert’s monumental Wandererfantasie will also be performed.

In Schubert’s works, the traveller is a lonely, wandering outsider trapped within his own inner world. However, the native Viennese’s fascination with the theme of travel may have been driven by a completely different motivation than mere lack of recognition, failing health and Prince Metternich’s repressive regime. For he was, in fact, a passionate traveller!

He left us a detailed travelogue of one of his holiday journeys in 1825 through the Austrian Salzkammergut region in his correspondence with his parents. In one of the letters, he writes: ‘I spent six weeks in Gmunden, whose surroundings are truly divine, and just like its inhabitants – particularly the lovely Traweger – it moved me deeply and did me a world of good.’

Together with his friend, the singer Johann Michael Vogel, they undertook excursions in the surrounding area, went on boat trips and played music practically every day at the home of their host, Ferdinand Traweger. Schubert also worked here on his Great Symphony in C major, which was admired by a number of Czech composers, including Bedřich Smetana, Antonín Dvořák and the young Leoš Janáček. It was not performed until eleven years after Schubert’s death, when Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy conducted it with his Gewandhausorchester in Leipzig in 1839.

If you’re an artistic soul, the Salzkammergut is highly recommended. Arnold Schönberg composed his first piece using the dodecaphonic technique here by Lake Traunsee, whilst the area around Lake Attersee was a favourite of Gustav Mahler and Gustav Klimt. So, if you’re looking to compose a symphony or paint a magnificent painting, the Salzkammergut is the perfect destination!