Artwork of the Day
With the Artwork of the Day we connect a work of art to one of the concert programmes. Sometimes the link is obvious, sometimes surprising or unexpected. Today’s artwork: Der Chasseur im Walde (1814) by Caspar David Friedrich.
The painting shows a small figure: a French hunter wandering, lost, in an overwhelming and dark forest. He appears disoriented, perhaps even threatened by the unpredictability of nature. The painting is characteristic of Romanticism: it’s not the heroic hunter who takes center stage, but rather the experience of someone confronted with the mysterious and infinite powers of the natural world. The forest is not merely a backdrop, but a psychological landscape — a place of silence, fear, and wonder.
This vision aligns closely with Robert Schumann’s piano cycle Waldszenen (1848/49). In nine miniatures, Schumann evokes a journey through the forest, with each piece capturing a different emotional coloring of the environment. The opening piece, Eintritt, portrays the step into a new world, just as Friedrich’s painting shows the transition into the woods. In pieces such as Jäger auf der Lauer and Jagdlied, we hear echoes of the hunt, marking the human presence in nature.
As in the painting, Waldszenen is not about a realistic depiction of nature, but about an inner experience. The listener enters a landscape that symbolizes introspection, existential uncertainty, and the longing to understand something greater than the self. Both artists invite us to see the forest not just as a physical place, but as a mirror of the soul.
