The Romantic period in German and Austrian music is usually defined as the later nineteenth century. But the formal freedom of Romanticism, its love of nature, its indebtedness to literature, and above all its emphasis on intense self-expression, are prefigured in the Viennese classical period; and echoes of Romanticism resound throughout the first half of the twentieth century. In its 2011/12 series, the Nash Ensemble, Wigmore Hall’s acclaimed chamber ensemble in residence, traces the Romantic spirit from Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert by way of Mendelssohn, Schumann and Brahms to Schoenberg and Richard Strauss. And leading singers join the Ensemble in song cycles by Mahler, to mark the centenary of his death.