Winterreise

Schubert knew madness. He knew it to the depths of his soul and feared it. And out of his fear he wrote the greatest monument to love lost, to death lost, to madness found. He wrote Die Winterreise, the most hopeless art work ever conceived by the despairing mind of man. Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau is the voice of Winterreise. In small part, this is because he recorded it seven times between 1952 and 1990. In larger part, this is because he is able to transform himself into the despairing lover. Yet Fischer-Dieskau is still the most lucid and most technically controlled of madmen. As Ingmar Bergman remarked on actor Max von Sydow, "If I'd had a psychopath to present these deeply psychopathic roles, it would have been unbearable". At 55, Fischer-Dieskau returned to Winterreise in 1980, no longer the sad swain or the suicidal lover, but as a man bowed with age and burdened with an interpretive past. His voice far past freshness, Fischer-Dieskau still has something to say concerning Winterreise, indeed, about man's fate. Accompanied by the self-effacing Daniel Barenboim, Fischer-Dieskau sings of the meaninglessness of love of the pointlessness of life.

This DVD showcases Quasthoff’s soulful interpretation of Schubert’s Die Winterreise, filmed earlier this year in Berlin with Daniel Barenboim on the piano.
It captures not only Quasthoff’s exceptional musicality but also the emotional gravity of his performance, which led Der Tagesspiegel to extol Quasthoff’s astonishing ability "not so much recall events as relive them all over again, summoning them back to life."
In addition to the full concert, the DVD includes rich bonus footage from the rehearsal and interviews with Thomas Quasthoff and Daniel Barenboim – allowing a close look on how these two musical masterminds work out their vision of Schubert’s touching masterpiece.