Song in the City: When Love Speaks Back: A Dichterliebe Dialogue
Fri 10 Apr
|St Giles, Cripplegate, Barbican
Robert Schumann’s Dichterliebe is presented complete, interwoven with spoken excerpts from modern poetry that give voice to the woman left unheard in Heinrich Heine’s original texts.
Time & Location
10 Apr 2026, 19:30 – 20:45
St Giles, Cripplegate, Barbican, Fore St, Barbican, London EC2Y 8DA, UK
About the event
Ludwig Obst tenor | Gavin Roberts piano
When Love Speaks Back: A Dichterliebe Dialogue reimagines one of the great Romantic song cycles through a contemporary lens. Robert Schumann’s Dichterliebe is presented complete, interwoven with spoken excerpts from modern poetry that give voice to the woman left unheard in Heinrich Heine’s original texts.
These poetic responses — by writers including Louise Glück, Maggie Nelson, Adrienne Rich, and Warsan Shire — offer clarity, resistance, and reflection, reframing the emotional narrative of the cycle. The evening concludes with Gustav Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, whose songs of wandering and resignation feel like the inevitable continuation of Schumann’s story of love and loss.