Winter Journeys
Everything but a Lieder Recital: New Interpretations of Schubert’s Legendary Song Cycle
Franz Schubert wrote his song cycle »Winterreise« (A Winter’s Journey) just one year before his death. The 24 songs, in which the poems of Wilhelm Müller are set to music, have been regarded as the gold standard of the genre ever since. It is said that contemporary audiences were shocked by the intense expressiveness of the work, and today’s audiences can still be heard taking deep breaths during performances thanks to the profound treatment of themes such as leave-taking, peregrination and death, and their intensive musical arrangement.
Eight very different interpretations performed between November and March offer the opportunity for in-depth engagement with this classic Romantic work. However, you won’t find a lieder recital in the conventional sense because even though Matthias Goerne and Markus Hinterhäuser provide faithful interpretations of the text and music, a strong visual level is added through film projections by the South African artist William Kentridge.
Ian Bostridge has sung the »Winterreise« countless times and has even written a book about it. In Hans Zender’s »composed interpretation« he takes on the largely untouched vocal part, while the piano part has been adapted to an orchestra’s kaleidoscopic range.
Nico and the Navigators stage Schubert’s lieder with a string quartet, four singers and three performers, while in her »Winterreise« Elfriede Jelinek seizes on themes such as restlessness and desolation, condensing them into one of her most personal and moving works.
Inspired by »Leiermann«, Matthias Loibner and Natasa Mirkovic achieve a great sense of urgency and intensity in their version of the piece for hurdy-gurdy and voice. In »The Cold Trip«, Bernhard Lang translates Schubert’s music into a unique, partly electronic meta-composition, and with »Winterreise« on their lips and a rucksack full of home-made instruments on their backs, two young musicians and performers make their way to the Elbphilharmonie to give new relevance and topicality to the motifs of longing, alienation and home.