An exploration of the world's most famous and challenging song cycle Schubert's Winter Journey
(Winterreise) by a leading interpreter of the work who teases out the themes-literary
historical psychological-that weave through the twenty-four songs that make up this legendary
masterpiece. Completed in the last months of the young Schubert's life Winterreise has come
to be considered the single greatest piece of music in the history of Lieder. Deceptively
laconic-these twenty-four short poems set to music for voice and piano are performed
uninterrupted in little more than an hour-it nonetheless has an emotional depth and power that
no music of its kind has ever equaled. A young man rejected by his beloved leaves the house
where he has been living and walks out into snow and darkness. As he wanders away from the
village and into the empty countryside he experiences a cascade of emotions-loss grief anger
and acute loneliness shot through with only fleeting moments of hope-until the landscape he
inhabits becomes one of alienation and despair. Originally intended to be sung to an intimate
gathering performances of Winterreise now pack the greatest concert halls around the world.
Drawing equally on his vast experience performing this work (he has sung it more than one
hundred times) on his musical knowledge and on his training as a scholar Bostridge teases
out the enigmas and subtle meanings of each of the twenty-four lyrics to explore for us the
world Schubert inhabited his biography and psychological makeup the historical and political
pressures within which he became one of the world's greatest composers and the continuing
resonances and affinities that our ears still detect today making Schubert's wanderer our
mirror.
