Christoph Prégardien – La bella molinera: Palau de la Música Catalana

About the Event

Experience chamber music like never before in this astonishing performance of Schubert's masterwork at Barcelona's remarkable Palau de la Música Catalana.

Tenor Christoph Prégardien performs in one of the most anticipated events of the season, an unmissable event for song fans. Impeccable vocal technique, intelligent musicality and the ability to touch the heart of the audience are just some of the reasons why Prégardien has become one of the world's leading tenors, especially in the field of Lieder.
Take this opportunity to hear Die schöne Müllerin, the final part of Franz Schubert's song cycle. Excitement, joy, hope, envy, sadness, anger, despair and resignation are portrayed through poems by Wilhelm Müller. Schubert paints a journey through the various states of mind of unrequited love, using nature to mirror and amplify human emotions.
Pregárdien performs with Roger Vignoles, one of the most sought‐after pianists, accompanying voices such as Anne Sofie von Otter, Thomas Hampson, Gitta‐Maria Sjöberg and Sarah Walker in an evening at the Schubert Festival in Barcelona.

Franz Schubert

During his rather short life, Franz Schubert, one of the fathers of romanticism in music, had always been an unappreciated genius who had never received public acclaim. Only his family and friends were delighted by his music, and most of his works were discovered and published only many years after his death. Franz Schubert was born on the 31th of March 1797 in the suburbs of Vienna. His father and eldest brother were amateur musicians and they taught him to play piano and violin. At the age of 11 Schubert was a singer in a choir at the Lichtenthal parish and later auditioned for Antonio Salieri and admitted to the emperor’s choir. During that period young Franz started composing his own works.

However, after his voice broke he had to leave the choir and in 1814 he started working as a teacher in the same parish school as his father. He never stopped composing and 4 years later he decided to quit teaching and devote his life completely to music. He fell out with his father because of that and struggled to make ends meet. In 1818 Schubert went to Vienna, where he met Vogl. Together they gave private concerts in small aristocratic circles, mainly playing Lieder, which Schubert wrote around 600. Franz Schubert gave only one big public concert in his whole life in March 1828, which was very warmly received by the audience. However, his health was deteriorating and in November the same year he died of thyroid fever at the age of 31.