Schubert Winterreise

“Schubert’s Winterreise was present for both of us very early in our lives. Daniel keeps telling me how he sat at the piano with his grandfather and played “Der Leiermann”. We were fascinated by this work, which seemed to know so much about what we felt and whose story was somehow our story.

When Franz Schubert in 1827 invited a friend to the first performance of his Winterreise, he called it "a cycle of horrifying songs". The texts that he had chosen to set were by the poet Wilhelm Müller, whose 24 poems form a psychodrama which starts with regret over a lost love but develops into an inner voyage in which a nameless Wanderer probes for answers to existential questions. There is no plot, no events in the external world: instead, we spy on fleeting emotions and thoughts. In setting these poems to music Schubert was confronting his own probable fate: Winterreise was completed the year before his death in 1828, at the age of 31, and he will have known that the syphilis he had contracted in late 1822 often led to insanity and paralysis before release in death. With this in mind, one understands why Schubert himself said that the cycle had cost him "more effort than any of my other songs".

It is February 2021 and Berlin is unreally quiet. Snow covers the streets and muffles the sound of the few cars braving the streets of a metropolis in lockdown. Our recording location, the Staatsoper Unter der Linden, is in an equally unreal state: the hectic daily rhythm of the opera house is on hiatus, with only one opera in rehearsal, and for only one performance. And this single performance will be for an empty hall, with only cameras for audience. In the midst of this unusually quiet setting are a singer, a pianist, and a special work, Schubert’s Winterreise.

Jonas Kaufmann, German singer extraordinaire, may not be fully human. His exquisite chocolatey tenor, coupled with his extraordinary command of diction, tone and emotion, lend him an other-worldly air, whether performing opera or singing lieder. This man can do no wrong, as was witnessed Tuesday night at his Berlin Philharmonic performance of Schubert’s intense song cycle Winterreise. Accompanied by his long-time friend and mentor, Helmut Deutsch, Kaufmann inhabited a world of his own, one so far removed from that of the concert hall that he appeared dazed when the audience broke into applause.

Far from being prejudicial to the work’s integrity, a transcription of Winterreise for voice and string quartet follows a tradition that enabled the music of Schubert, from 1830, to spread throughout the whole of Europe. The lieder in particular were the object of the most diverse adaptations, with the voice replaced by a cello, a violin, a horn or even a cornet, and the piano part at times orchestrated. Such an approach is therefore perfectly authentic, even if the juxtaposition of a string quartet and the lied is not the easiest to deal with; the first indeed embodies a noble genre, scholarly, elaborate in style, stylistically complex, whereas the second remains attached to its popular origins and to a simplicity in both the vocal part and the accompaniment.

Franz Schubert’s masterpiece, his song cycle Winterreise, was written shortly before his death in 1828, at the age of only 31. On his winter journey, the singer wanders as a lost soul in harsh terrain, wracked by conflicting emotions, but consoled by his memories of kinder times. Benjamin Appl commented: "Every time I perform it, Winterreise feels like a new and different journey, depending on my own mood, the atmosphere in the hall, and of course the shared creativity with the all-important pianist. For singers, Schubert’s wanderer is a lifetime companion, yet a daunting one as we confront all the great recordings and performances that are already out there. The challenge for every singer is not to be inhibited, but to find fresh ways of understanding and transmitting both words and music to their own generation". Somehow, in Winterreise, Schubert has made space for that potential. As Benjamin Britten said: “Every time I come back to it, I am amazed not only by the extraordinary mastery of it, but by the renewal of the magic. Each time, the mystery remains”.Winterreise is Benjamin Appl’s first release for Alpha Classics as part of a multi-album deal. In this recording he is joined by long-time collaborator and pianist James Baillieu.

From the perspective of lost love: Joyce DiDonato sings Schubert's song cycle Winterreise. The world-famous mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato and the conductor, and Pianist Yannick Nézet-Séguin, take one of the most brilliant song cycles ever written: Schubert's winter journey.

On his first recording, French baritone Edwin Crossley-Mercer is joined by pianist Yoan Héreau for a performance of Schubert's Winterreise. His mother, painter Claudine Franck was also inspired by this masterpiece. Following Mu¨ller and Schubert's inspiration, the character in this frightening story appears in each illustration, and is never the same. This traveler brings a symbolic and prophetic interpretation to everything he sees and takes us with him into the depths of the human soul, whose secrets could only be revealed by Schubert. Combining musicality, declamation and figurative art, Mirare's first CD book offers a synesthetic perception of Romantic lieder through a unique collaboration music and art.

Pavol Breslik writes of his new release: “From the very beginning, I had enormous respect for Die Winterreise, because it demands everything from the narrator. Whenever I open a page where I have set the notes aside and look at it again, I have new questions. And sometimes I don’t find an answer to everything. This ‘process’ never stops.” With his 3rd Lieder Album for Orfeo, Pavol Breslik sets foot on the 'Olympus' of German Lied Gesang with Schubert's Winterreise. His internationally acclaimed recording of Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin (C737151) foreshadows that he has something to tell us also about this genius and mystical masterwork. “We artists are always strongly influenced by the work we are just doing. We put our entire soul into it and do our very utmost to present it to the listener. Only whoever has really felt suffering, can sing about suffering. Here, it is a question of authenticity.”

It is February 2021 and Berlin is unreally quiet. Snow covers the streets and muffles the sound of the few cars braving the streets of a metropolis in lockdown. Our recording location, the Staatsoper Unter der Linden, is in an equally unreal state: the hectic daily rhythm of the opera house is on hiatus, with only one opera in rehearsal, and for only one performance. And this single performance will be for an empty hall, with only cameras for audience. In the midst of this unusually quiet setting are a singer, a pianist, and a special work, Schubert’s Winterreise.The dreamy atmosphere of the city and the theatre feels extraordinarily apt, and helps us focus and tune in to the liminal world of the song cycle, a world that has fascinated us both since beginning of our studies. Winterreise brings both the performer and the listener to the fundamental questions of humanity and existence. The human and social levels of the work remain pertinent and current. Schubert’s marvellous music absorbs and intoxicates, while at the same time, demands of its performers reflection on their own limits as a musician.