A Musical-Literary Evening

About the event

Konstantin Zvyagin was born in 1990 in the ancient Russian city of Novgorod. He studied at the renowned Gnessin Academy of Music in Moscow under Prof. Tatiana Zelikman, before deepening his training with a Master’s degree at the Cologne University of Music and Dance under Prof. Nina Tichman. Since January 2020 he has taught at the Akademie für Tonkunst in Darmstadt.

Dr. Ulrike Kienzle is a Privatdozentin for musicology at Goethe University Frankfurt. She works as a scholarly author, lecturer, dramaturge and curator, and has published books on Richard Wagner, Franz Schreker, Giuseppe Sinopoli, and Robert and Clara Schumann.

Musicologist Dr. Ulrike Kienzle guides you knowledgeably through the realm of spirits, illuminating the fascinating connections between poetry, life and music in Lord Byron and Robert Schumann, and reciting letters, poems and linking texts from Byron’s „Manfred“. Pianist Konstantin Zvyagin, known for his equally imaginative and expressive concert arrangements of Wagner’s „Ring“, brings the spirits of Romanticism to sounding life.

The theme of the supernatural, the uncanny and the threatening – which drives people into fear, despair and madness – plays a central role in Romantic literature. No other composer anchored this theme so deeply in his music as Robert Schumann, whose works are often permeated by literary allusions.

Biographies