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“What holdest thou concealed beneath thy mantle that draws my soul towards thee with such mysterious power?” asks the Romantic poet Novalis in his Hymns to the Night. Here – as in E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Nachtstücke – the night becomes a metaphor for extreme states of mind threatened by madness. The dark side of life embodies fears, both the enjoyable shiver of the ghost story and the existential threat of death. It was not only literary figures who attempted to make these feelings tangible, but also composers such as Robert Schumann. His Nachtlied for choir and orchestra is based on a poem by Friedrich Hebbel, in which nocturnal thoughts “constrict the heart in the chest” of the lyrical protagonist.

Mysteriously languid, then pulsating with nervous restlessness but also full of drama, Antonio Vivaldi created his flute concerto “La notte” – performed here by Emmanuel Pahud, principal flute of the Berliner Philharmoniker. The courtly chivalry that Luigi Boccherini depicted in his 1790 Musica notturna delle strade di Madrid is translated into a kind of dream state by Luciano Berio some 200 years later in his Quattro versioni originali della Ritirata notturna di Madrid di L. Boccherini.

Arnold Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht, based on a poem by Richard Dehmel, enters deep psychological realms and is presented here by Kirill Petrenko. A pair of lovers walk through the night, while she confesses to him that she is pregnant by another man. The conflict audibly comes to a head – but in the end there is a resolution: the man promises to raise the child as his own.