In the spring and summer of 1825, Franz Schubert travelled through Upper Austria, performing recitals and beginning to compose his Great C major Symphony. For the bicentenary of the composer's birth, the poet and German scholar David Constantine retraces this journey to explore the sources - physical and Romantic - of Schubert's passionate depiction of nature and to reflect on how this sunny summer break was to prepare him for the autumn and winter of his short life. With Simon Russell Beale as Schubert and singer Ian Bostridge , conductor Roger Norrington , Schubert scholars Elizabeth Norman McKay , Nicholas Rast and Marie-Agnes Dietrich and Romantic experts Phillip Brady and Peter Branscombe. Producer Beaty Rubens