Exhibition concert

Selected Lieder von Hugo Wolf

Students of the Lied class Prof. Dr. h. c. Mitsuko Shirai - Prof. Hartmut Höll will perform with the grand piano that once belonged to Hugo Wolf.

In 1890 Hugo Wolf came to Tübingen for the first time, appearing unannounced at the home of Kauffmann, the university music director, who had previously written to him in Vienna – full of enthusiasm about his newly published new settings of poems by Eduard Mörike. Kauffmann's house stood at the bottom of the Neckarhalde in Tübingen and was soon the meeting place of a music-loving circle of friends to whom Hugo Wolf played and sang his songs – the starting point for a growing Wolf community in southern Germany, on whose support the Viennese composer could count far more than on Viennese society. Among the first Wolf admirers was the Stuttgart lawyer Hugo Faisst, who soon became one of the most important promoters; in 1889 he initiated a Hugo Wolf Society in Stuttgart, on which today's International Hugo Wolf Academy for Song - Poetry - Lied Art Stuttgart is based.

During his first visit to Tübingen, Wolf complained bitterly about the old Schiedmaier grand piano in Kauffmann's house. Thus, the wealthy Faisst Kauffmann adored a Bechstein grand piano for Christmas 1893. On it, Hugo Wolf played with delight and enthusiasm during later visits - not only his own songs, but also Isolden's Liebestod and the Siegfried Idyll by Richard Wagner, four-handed Bruckner's symphonies.
In 2005, the piano was completely overhauled and restored to playing condition by master piano builder Thomas Gärtner of Karlsruhe. Afterwards, it stood in Tübingen's Hölderlin Tower for several years.
Thanks to a generous campaign by the Friends of the Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, it is now a permanent fixture of the Kunsthalle and can be heard in its special beauty at the many concerts held in cooperation with the Karlsruhe University of Music.