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Sir John Eliot Gardiner conducts 'Scenes from Goethe's Faust,' Robert Schumann's dramatic masterpiece at the Royal Concertgebouw, Amsterdam.

Schumann started work on this two hour epic in 1842 and was still working on it a year before his death in 1856. For, although he was a prodigiously fast worker, on this occasion he was daunted by the task in hand, as he explained in a letter to Felix Mendelssohn: "Any composer would not only be judged by his treatment of one of the seminal and most-widely acclaimed works in German literature, but would also be setting himself up to be compared to Mozart." Another reason was Schumann's avowed intent to raise the scope of dramatic music in Germany to the exalted levels of Romantic German literature, indeed to the peak of Faust, Goethe's own magnum opus. In the end, Schumann acknowledged that, “there was only one way of doing justice to Faust, and that meant to select only a few intense and symbolic moments to be set to music." Unlike Berlioz and Gounod in their treatments of the subject, Schumann found most of his inspiration in the mystical second book. So, rather than ending with Gretchen's death and ascension to heaven, his version follows Faust to his death at the hands of Mephistopheles's minions and into an ethereal plane. It concludes with a moving chorale, the ''Chorus Mysticus,'' using the eight lines with which Goethe ended his work.

In this performance given in Amsterdam in 2019, Sir John Eliot Gardiner conducts a top line-up of soloists including Christian Gerhaher as Faust and Christiane Karg as Gretchen.

Presented by Martin Handley.

Robert Schumann: Scenes from Goethe's Faust

Faust… Christian Gerhaher (baritone)
Gretchen… Christiane Karg (soprano)
Louise Alder (soprano)
Ann Hallenberg (contralto)
Claire Barnett-Jones (mezzo-soprano)
Ariel … Werner Güra (tenor)
Tareq Nazmi (bass)
Mephistopheles… Kurt Rydl (bass)
Netherlands Chamber Choir
National Children’s Choir
Laurens Collegium Rotterdam

Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra
Sir John Eliot Gardiner (conductor)