László Kéringer and László Borbély present a captivating cross-section of Romantic song literature: the backbone of the programme consists of works by Franz Schubert, the king of songwriters, and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, whose songs are far less well-known than they would deserve. Their compositional world is complemented by pieces of French composers Maurice Ravel and Gabriel Fauré, and Richard Wagner. “This programme is a selection of my personal favourites. Singing them is a great pleasure. They all revolve around dreams: from the dreams of childhood through the reveries of adulthood to the final years following the dreams that never came true. Turning with gratitude to those that were realized, with acceptance and resignation to those that remain unrealized. For me, it was a great discovery that these romantic songs, if not considered from the point of view of the performing tradition, can be sang with the same simplicity as the music of earlier periods, Viennese Classicism or the Baroque. In time, these composers worked at a much shorter distance from each other than it seems looking back from 2025. By performing these songs, I want to convey this simplicity, and also the love of singing”, summed up László Kéringer.

Photo credit: Lenke Szilágyi, Norbert Balog