You could argue that madness is never far away in the 19th-century song repertoire, in which baritone Christian Gerhaher and pianist Gerold Huber have established such a formidable reputation. However, this programme, spanning the 19th to the 21st centuries, placed the idea of insanity firmly centre stage.
Almost all the words Gerhaher sang were by Nikolaus Lenau, the Austrian poet, who died in an asylum in 1850. But we first heard brief words by Georg Trakl, spoken by Gerhaher to introduce Elis, three short piano pieces by Heinz Holliger inspired by that war-damaged poet. These fleeting works broke us gently into Holliger’s uncompromising yet delicate and often pictorial soundworld, Huber’s hands darting from one end of the keyboard to another and occasionally reaching in to the body of the piano to set the strings vibrating directly.
