General information

Originally conceived solely as a master class, over the years it has evolved into a festival called “Liedkunst im Schloss vor Husum.” The classes are open to the public and have been very well received by an ever-growing audience. Some of the participants are students at music conservatories, while others are already established professionals. The master class, organized in close collaboration with the Nordfriesland Foundation and the Nordfriesland District Music School, ensures a careful selection of participants and, based on experience, is of a very high standard.

The series is directed and founded by the internationally renowned singer Ulf Bästlein and the pianist Charles Spencer, one of the leading lieder accompanists of our time. Charles Spencer’s musical partners include Jessye Norman, Christa Ludwig, Thomas Quasthoff, Thomas Hampson, Vesselina Kasarova, and Elina Garança. The bass-baritone Ulf Bästlein, who grew up in Husum, is a professor for singing at the University of Music in Graz and the University of Music in Lübeck. Both artists are connected by their long-standing intensive artistic and pedagogical collaboration.

In autumn 2018, Ulf Bästlein was awarded the highest award of the district of North Frisia – the Hans Momsen Prize – for his many years of service to cultural life in North Friesland. In 2021, Prime Minister Daniel Günther presented him with Schleswig-Holstein’s highest award for his “outstanding services to the state of Schleswig-Holstein”: the Order of Merit.

In the Liedkunst concerts, the Schleswig-Holstein native Ulf Bästlein has always implemented portraits of a cultural inheritance and possible future of the music of his homeland. The names Theodor Storm, Friedrich Hebbel, Emanuel Geibel, Klaus Groth, Johann Heinrich Voß, Hardenack Otto Conrad Zinck, Gustav Jenner or Hans Christian Détlefsen (among others) run like a thread through the programs of the past 25 years of Liedkunst im Schloss vor Husum.