Matthias Goerne opened Wigmore Hall's 125th-anniversary season with Schubert's Schwanengesang and B flat Sonata, with David Fray at the piano.
Matthias Goerne, whose Schubert edition for Harmonia Mundi runs to twelve discs, opened Wigmore Hall’s 125th-anniversary season in Marylebone with Schubert on Tuesday 9 September 2025. The French pianist David Fray joined him.
Goerne was born in Weimar in 1967 and studied voice in Leipzig. He then took lessons from Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, whom he counted as his idol, and later from Elisabeth Schwarzkopf.
He made his professional debut in 1990 in Bach’s St Matthew Passion under Kurt Masur, and reached the Salzburg Festival in 1997. He has recorded lieder for Deutsche Grammophon with Jan Lisiecki, Seong-Jin Cho and Daniil Trifonov, and sings Wagner and Strauss at the Royal Opera House.
The first half gave the songs of Schwanengesang, with “Herbst” placed among them. After the interval Fray played the Piano Sonata in B flat, D960, the last sonata Schubert wrote. Schubert composed both works in 1828, the year he died.
The encores were “Die Taubenpost”, from Schwanengesang, and the Andante from the G flat Impromptu, D899.
Fray, born in Tarbes in 1981, won second grand prize at the Montreal International Music Competition in 2004. His early recordings paired Schubert with Liszt and Bach with Boulez.