Josephine Lang at the Utrecht Early Music Festival
This August, I will return to the Festival Oude Muziek Utrecht with a programme devoted to Josephine Lang, one of the most compelling song composers of the German Romantic period.
Rediscovering Lang’s music has become an important part of my work in Tübingen, where she lived for much of her adult life. I have pursued the project through my own research and performances, as well as through my collaboration with soprano Elisabeth Hetherington. Last year, Elisabeth and I performed Lang’s music at Villa Köstlin, her former home in Tübingen—an especially evocative setting in which to bring this repertoire back to life.
In her youth, Josephine Lang was celebrated in Munich. She was encouraged and taught by Felix Mendelssohn, while Robert Schumann admired and published her music. Marriage to the University of Tübingen professor Christian Reinhold Köstlin in 1842 brought her flourishing career as a pianist largely to a halt: removed from Munich’s musical circles and occupied with six children, her output declined dramatically—an artistic “exile” in Tübingen that reflects the constraints facing female composers in the nineteenth century. Despite this, the Köstlin home became an important literary and musical salon, frequented by figures including the Tübingen poet Ludwig Uhland, whose poetry Lang had already set to music. After Uhland’s death she composed the deeply personal "Elegie auf den Tod Ludwig Uhlands", Op. 31, in his memory. Following her husband’s own death in 1856, financial necessity pushed Lang back into professional musical life: she taught, composed and sought publication again, with support from Clara Schumann and Ferdinand Hiller.
This year, on 31 August, we will continue that exploration in the Balzaal of Utrecht’s historic Paushuize. Simon Mulder will join us as reciter, bringing Romantic poetry into dialogue with the music in much the way that it was born: in the intimacy of the home salon.
The concert takes place on Monday, 31 August 2026, from 22:15 to 23:15 at Paushuize, Kromme Nieuwegracht 49, Utrecht. At the moment, the concert is sold out, but it is still worth checking the festival page in case additional tickets become available.
Concert information and ticket availability