What is Die Liederreise?

Die Liederreise is a 17-day student trip to Germany with a focus on studying German Lieder and their cultural background in the setting where they were composed. Students will visit German cities, tour composers’ houses, go to world-class concerts, and receive high-class musical training together in an artistically-minded intensive setting.

If you are interested in honing your skills as a German Lied singer or pianist (or other instrumentalist), or deepening your understanding of the genre as a musicologist or Germanist, then Die Liederreise is for you.

UNM Undergraduate and Graduate Credit in Music History is available for for all participants (3 credits for either undergraduate or graduate).

Elements

Masterclasses At the heart of our trip are the masterclass phases in the beautiful Landesmusikakademie Sachsen, in Colditz. This is where we all live, eat, work, and hang out together. During our two masterclass phases, each singer, pianist, chamber musician, or other student will receive daily lessons in German Lied interpretation to shape and sharpen their performance skills. We will work on text understanding, diction, phrasing, performance traditions, stage presence, and anything else that contributes to a fantastic performance of German Lieder. Nightly studio classes offer a supportive and fun learning environment for participants to share their progress from the coaching sessions.

The final portion of Die Liederreise 2026 will have us ending in Salzburg, Austria, where we will be working with guest teachers Dr. Victoria Browers and internationally-known soprano Barbara Bonney. The Salzburg portion will feature the final poetry seminar (all faculty), a critical deep-dive into life and auditioning in German-speaking countries (Browers) and a day of master classes on Mozart and Strauss lieder (Bonney).

Poetry Class Also during our two masterclass phases, the whole group will meet daily in a seminar format to delve into the rich German poetic heritage which gave birth to the Lied as an art form. We will look at the texts of major song cycles and the cultural background which is indispensable for understanding these texts.

Opera We will be watching a German-language of “Das Rheingold” at Deutsche Oper Berlin for the first night of the program. This will be a hallmark production due to the 150th anniversary of Wagner’s “Ring Cycle.”

Leipzig In between the two masterclass phases, we will be traveling to the city of Leipzig, home of Felix Mendelssohn, Johann Sebastian Bach, Robert & Clara Schumann and others. We will listen to a cantata performed in St. Thomas Church, where Bach worked for 27 years. We will also have the opportunity to tour the homes of Bach, the Schumanns, and the Mendelssohns.

FAQ

The Instructors

Pianist Joshua Rupley studied Piano Performance (B.Mus.) and German Language and Literature (B.A.) at the University of New Mexico before emigrating to Germany. He earned a M.Mus. in German Lieder Interpretation under Gerold Huber and a German musical doctorate “Meisterklassendiplom” under Silke-Thora Matthies.

An award-winning specialist on the German language and Lied repertoire from both the literary and musical sides, he has recorded several CDs of German Lieder and worked with some of the finest Lied singers in Germany, including Christian Gerhaher, Jochen Kupfer, and Julian Habermann. An avid proponent of societally relevant new music, has premiered more than two dozen contemporary compositions, including multiple works dedicated to him. In 2025, he gave the world premiere of C. René Hirschfeld’s piano concerto nacht.wachen with the Kyiv Symphony Orchestra in the historic WWII-era bomber factory Hugo Junkers in Dessau, Germany. He also released two new CDs last year, including Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit and Mendelssohn’s Lieder ohne Worte, as well as C. René Hirschfeld’s monumental hour-long cycle Music for Piano Solo, which was listed by Fanfare Magazine as one of the 5 best Classical albums of the year. In 2026, Joshua Rupley began a project to record the complete solo piano works of Johannes Brahms.

Joshua Rupley is currently on faculty for Lied interpretation at the Leopold Mozart College of Music at the University of Augsburg, Germany.

Dr. Kristin Ditlow studied Piano Performance and Vocal Accompanying (B.M.) at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, Vocal Accompanying and Coaching at Westminster Choir College (M.M.) and Collaborative Piano at the Eastman School of Music (D.M.A.). Further studies in song and lieder took her to the Tanglewood Music Center and the Franz Schubert Institut. Her published output includes CDs with instrumentalists Veronica Mascaro (flute); Eric Lau (saxophone) and Ellen Rose (viola); a double-disc of solo works released in 2022, and an upcoming release in
2024 of all-Widor songs with soprano Amy Pfrimmer. She is co-editor of a new anthology of Widor songs also to be released in late 2024. She is on the faculty of the University of New Mexico as Associate Professor of Vocal Coaching and Music Director of UNM Opera Theatre.

Victoria Browers is an American soprano whose career spans opera, recital, and chamber music, with performances at venues including the Roerich Museum in New York, the Stony Brook Chamber Music Festival, and Zipper Hall in Los Angeles. She has appeared in leading roles such as Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro, Musetta in La Bohème, the Governess in The Turn of the Screw, and Younger Alyce in Tom Cipullo’s Glory Denied, and has collaborated with artists including cellist Khari Joyner, flutist Randolph Bowman, and pianists JJ Penna and Kristina Marinova.

Alongside her performing career, Victoria is committed to advancing vocal education. She is Artist Faculty at SongFest, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Voice at Westminster Choir College where she coordinates the Lindsey Christiansen Art Song Festival, and has also taught voice and curated recital programs in the CoOPERAtive Program. She also serves as songSLAM Coordinator for Sparks & Wiry Cries, a global platform for art song. Victoria is the founder and artistic director of PASSAGGIO, an immersive Salzburg-based initiative that integrates singing, language, and cultural exchange. As Assistant Teacher to Barbara Bonney, she brings this mentorship into PASSAGGIO, where Bonney also teaches. Through PASSAGGIO and collaborations with partners such as Presto Arts in China, Victoria is shaping innovative models of performance, pedagogy, and cross-cultural dialogue for the next generation of singers.

Barbara Bonney is widely recognized as a superlative recital and concert artist, and as one of the great Mozart and Strauss singers of her generation. She has made over 100 recordings with Decca, DGG, EMI, and Teldec, with the most important conductors and orchestras in the world today.

Ms. Bonney has appeared at the major opera houses and the most prestigious concert halls the world over. Her wide-ranging discography comprises sacred music, oratorio, opera, art song and chamber music. She has recorded in total 15 solo discs of art songs including songs by Schubert, Mozart, Strauss, Wolf and Mendelssohn, accompanied by the late pianist Geoffrey Parsons. Her recordings from London/Decca include a selection of American songs with André Previn at the piano, including Mr. Previn’s Vocalise and Miss Sallie Chisum Remembers Billy the Kid, which was written for Ms. Bonney, Copland’s Emily Dickinson Songs, Samuel Barber’s Hermit Songs, and Six Elizabethan Songs by Dominick Argento; Lieder by Robert and Clara Schumann, including Frauenliebe und -leben, with pianist Vladimir Ashkenazy; a Philips recording of Poulenc’s comic opera, Les mamelles de Tirésias, with Seiji Ozawa and the Saito Kinen Orchestra; and a London/Decca disc of Richard Strauss Lieder with pianist Malcolm Martineau including the Vier Letzte Lieder. The Scandinavian disc, Diamonds in the Snow with Antonio Pappano, won the Gramophone Award for best solo vocal recording. Ms. Bonney has also recorded a disc of early Elizabethan songs with Christopher Hogwood, the Academy of Ancient Music.

Bonney received several honorary Doctorate degrees – from her Alma Mater, the University of New Hampshire, Bowdoin College in Maine, the Royal Academy of Music in London, and the Brucknerhaus in Linz, Austria. She is a member of the prestigious Swedish Academy of Music, and an honorary citizen of the Mozarteum, Salzburg, Austria. Ms. Bonney recently finished her appointment as Professor at the University Mozarteum and is teaching privately, both online and in person, in Salzburg, Austria

Course Fee

Students taking the course for college credit: $2000 plus tuition for 3 credit hours during UNM Summer Intersession I (Special Topics in Music History, MUS 437/537).
Students taking the course without college credit: $2500.00.

Please note that this fee does not include:

• the cost of airfare to Germany
• isolated meals on the trip (many are included in the board of the two-weeks of master classes)
• fee to obtain or renew a passport
• international health insurance

View the Die Liederreise brochure.