Unrequited love. A seemingly trivial topic can result in a real masterpiece, provided that the work comes from under Franz Schubert's hand. The composer's accidental contact with the poetry of Wilhelm Müller inspired him to create one of the saddest stories in the history of music – the heartrending landscape of human misery, unforgettable loss, and above all a broken, icy heart.

The Winter Journey (Die Winterreise) is the second of two great cycles of Schubert’s songs written for voice and piano. Inspired by the poems of Müller, a former soldier, freethinker and writer, Schubert decided to create music to his verses. The result is a two-part cycle in which each part contains twelve songs. The genius composer finished the work just a few days before his death. It is worth noting that although the songs were composed with a tenor scale in mind, the material was often matched to other types of voices. This is a precedent set by Schubert himself. The Winter Journey tells the story of a young man abandoned by his beloved woman. With each subsequent song we see the current state of his mind and soul. Schubert paints in an excellent way a sonic picture of an injured heart, torn with great emotions: from overwhelming pain and excruciating longing, through memories of happy moments, hallucinations, loneliness, and reconciliation with destiny.

Stories deeply saturated with emotion, focusing on unhappy love, will be musically narrated by the excellent opera singer Jarosław Bręk and the outstanding pianist Marcin Sikorski. The award-winning musicians have already had performed Die Winterreise together before, and listeners at the National Music Forum can look forward to an excellent display of their talents.