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Winterreise |
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| Introduction by the Performers | ||||
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Extract from Robert Lloyd's Introduction...
Die Winterreise is a pinnacle in vocal art. Physically it tests the singer with its wide range and intensity. Temperamentally it tests the singer because it takes him into a sombre and depressive mood, sustained unrelentingly for seventy minutes. The piano part, at times deceptively uncomplicated, has flashes of extreme virtuoso playing. It is considered a challenge by all pianists, not least because in each of the songs it is the pianist who has to set the tempo and the mood. Accordingly, these songs are best considered as duets, each artist contributing equally, with a single artistic goal. It is important to understand that the poems by Muller use the imagery of nature as a reflection of human emotion — a subject dear to the poets of the Romantic movement. Nearly all the songs identify one aspect of nature — a river, a crow, a rocky crevice, a will o' the wisp — and draw on that image to explore some aspect of the protagonist's emotional state. It is remarkable that Muller has come up with twenty-three such images.
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There are twenty-four songs altogether, the first having a purely
narrative function. It alerts us to the fact that the protagonist has
been deserted in love in favour of a rich husband. It is therefore
curiously appropriate that Pip's paintings, all in abstract moods, do
not include this first, representational song.
Schubert transposes Muller's natural imagery into powerful musical motifs. These quickly swamp the words and the somewhat trite sentiments of the poems with sheer power of the colours and harmonies he uses. So completely does the music take over from the words that the cycle can be appreciated as abstract music. For me Die Winterreise is a musical representation of depression. The singer and the audience seem to go into a long dark tunnel of extreme emotion with only the tiniest chink of light visible at the very end... Die Winterreise is the only major song cycle available to the bass voice and is highly suitable for its sombre tones. The natural melancholy of the bass voice gives it a depth that is more than just low notes. It gains a kind of gravitas that makes it seem more an exploration of the meaning of life than the whinings of a rejected lover. 
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Die Winterreise is unquestionably a masterpiece and one that
continues to grow with familiarity. For me, it has been a lifelong
study. I keep returning to it and discovering new layers. It is
therefore very gratifying to find an artist of Pip's quality who can
identify the essence of the songs so graphically and who catches
Schubert's musical colours in the use of her own media — oil, canvas,
pencil and slate.
Robert Lloyd Julius Drake's Introduction What particular difficulty does Die Winterreise present for a pianist? The answer, I am sure is the same as for the singer: how to attempt to match adequately the sheer intensity and depth of feeling in Schubert's music. A performance of Die Winterreise cannot be undertaken lightly — this journey goes too far and demands too much. But for these very reasons it offers the greatest musical rewards. Julius Drake
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| From Franz Schubert & Wilhelm Muller to Robert Lloyd, Julius Drake & Pip Woolf | ||||
