On the oc­ca­sion of the pub­lic­a­tion's 200^th an­niversary of the song cycle "Des Knaben Wun­der­horn", one of the most cel­eb­rated bari­tones of our time, Thomas Hampson, ad­dresses him­self to the folk and art song rep­er­toire of Ger­man ro­man­ti­cism at the In­ter­na­tion­al Mu­sic Fest­iv­al "Heidel­ber­ger Frühling".

This doc­u­ment­ary film fo­cuses as well on the ac­cept­ance of the Wun­der­horn songs today and the pos­sible dif­fi­culties that sing­ers have to cope with them. Amongst his activ­it­ies in lec­tures and dis­cus­sion rounds with mu­si­co­lo­gists, Thomas Hampson leads a mas­ter class for sing­ers last­ing sev­er­al days.

The rep­er­toire is a com­pil­a­tion of the par­ti­cipants' own choice, as far as the in­ter­pret­a­tions elab­or­ate any mu­sic­al ver­sion of the Wun­der­horn. Great ex­pect­a­tions, curi­os­ity, strain, hard work, dis­il­lu­sion­ment, and the fi­nal mo­ment of re­lief are the ele­ments to be wit­nessed by fol­low­ing the stu­dents' artist­ic growth as they struggle as well with their own self per­cep­tions.