Ihre Favourite Winterreise

[Mandryka]

Andreas Schmidt's traveller on DG is really alone, isolated. It's devastating in its way, as devastating as Schreier/Richter, and possibly more convincing in the way it builds to an existential crisis. And he does something which I really value and by no means everyone else does: he makes Part 1 as expressive and and psychologically intense as Part 2. Toppest tier.

[Mandryka]

Gute Nacht is the only long strophic song in the cycle but it has the last stanza in the major. The others are shorter and/or have more contrasts within (e.g. Die Post, Frühlingstraum). (I think the best option is variation within a mostly strophic form like in "Der Lindenbaum".)
Müllerin has more simple strophic songs, I think, and begins with a fairly trite strophic one ("Das Wandern" became a folksy popular song in Germany, although with a slightly changed melodic line), although the only long one is the last one (Des Baches Wiegenlied) where it might fit better.

This requires some creativity of the singer and the accompanist to make little differences "speak". E.g in Gute Nacht the "disappointed hope" in the first 2 returns to minor after major (eg. verses 7+8  vs. 5+6) and of course the last stanza in major.

Benjamin Appl is particularly striking in the strophic songs in Winterreise I think. Exceptional performance all-round, more dramatic than I suggested in my comments on it above.

[Mandryka]

Back to this today, and while "enjoying" is certainly not the word (it is joyless), I am having some sort of positive aesthetic experience.


One impressive thing is that Schreier manages the contrast between desolation and anger possibly better than anyone else I've heard, and that's a big part of the cycle - and yet he avoids completely operatic melodrama. He's found a lieder-idiom which is perfect for this.

I bet Richter was in awe because of what Schreier came up with in the concert. He provides the perfect sympathetic and humble accompaniment - he knows his place! It's Schreier's show, his biggest moment, his masterpiece probably, and it's a jolly good thing that it was captured.

Does anyone have the Schreier/Olbertz Winterreise transferred from LP? If so, I'd love to hear it.

Just found this video of it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYlkGQDeu0M&ab_channel=BaroneVitellioScarpia1


Heinrich Rehkemper came up in another discussion -- certainly his Gutte Nacht is remarkable

https://youtu.be/03QG6pVMrXk

[Mandryka]

Nimsgern is a low baritone. He was an opera singer, Wotan in Janowski's Ring and Amfortas for Horenstein, though I think he'd retired when he made this Winterreise. Dramatic to the point where the word is insufficient - electric, a sort of nightmarish delirium. Müller meets Artaud! Very enjoyable for me. 

[knight66]

Certainly worth listening to this, more than once. Benjamin Appl is reserved, peaceful, thoughtful -- it's a lieder singer's performance rather than an opera singer or a narrator. He's got a honeyed voice.  Zero melodrama, minimum dynamic range. Really stimulating for me.

It may be the longest Winterreise on record -- I've not compared the timings with Jon Vickers/Peter Schaaf.  You have to be up for  himmlische Längen.

I have followed this singer for a few years having first accidentally heard a BBC broadcast with him singing some Mahler. He was then on their young artists's programme. I recommend his beautifully structured recital disc called Heimat.

The cover of his Winterreise disc comes from a film he made of a performance. It is not in the usual concert format. He performed it in a temporary building placed in snow up a mountain. It became an encounter with the weather as well as a recital. That did come across dramatically.


Incidentally, he has just announced that he is conducting Handel's Messiah which looks like a direction of his career that he intends to expand.

Knight

[Mandryka]

Very intimate, there's a fragility in the voice. A Winterreise à fleur de peau. This is Florian Boesch's second Winterreise.

[Mandryka]

Has anyone got a thought about this question:

Why doesn't he kill himself?

[Florestan]

Has anyone got a thought about this question:

Why doesn't he kill himself?

https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:8bb640b6-52da-41ca-8bfc-a441457b7960/files/rvx021f30s

[Mandryka]

Yes, even death eludes him. It really is a sort of Sisyphus vision of the void.

[Mandryka]

The rapid alternation between depressive, manic and tender moods makes this almost bipolar tripolar. 

Even Vickers' slight English accent, far from being annoying, contributes to the feeling of alienation and displacement.

In a league of its own, this Winterreise.

I wouldn't want to detract from Vickers here, he knows how to sing, he brings nobility and sincerity. I am his biggest fan. The problem I'm having is with Parsons, who just seems like an ineffectual half asleep pussy cat.

[Mandryka]

This live 1983 Winterreise from Jon Vickers and Peter Schaaf was made the year before his studio recording with Parsons. It is superior - a much more profound expressivity and communicative, visceral expressiveness and more responsive piano playing. The interpretation is in someways reminiscent of Schreier/Richter with one important difference - Vickers is right in the swing from the get go  This is the one to hear - tip top tier.

Is it operatic? Was Vickers ever operatic? He's just unique - he transcends genres. A sublime and irresistible force of nature.

[Mandryka]

One of the reviews on amazon calls him an "ogre doux" - and looking at the picture you can see that very apt description of Talvela's singing in his face. This was Martti Talvela's final recording. An opera singer, but one with an impressive lieder reputation,  his singing is by no means indelicate. He's a bass, but the voice is noble and flexible. Talvela is living the role, for sure.

The transposition down may not be so good for the piano part, that's a remark Bostridge makes - but Gothoni seems both sympathetic to Talvela's interpretation, and dramatic and alive in his performance.

This is worth hearing, no doubt about it.

 

[Mandryka]

Thomas Bauer and Siegfried Mauser took the train all the way from Moscow to Peking, stopping on the way to give Winterreise concerts. This is a warts and all recording and as far as I can see from online reviews, it has been universally panned by the cognoscenti - inflexible voice, not enough colour, not dark enough agressive piano playing, too operatic blah blah. 


I wonder whether we're listening to the same recording because I don't agree with any of those comments - I just find it absolutely irresistible, totally fascinating, both piano and voice thoroughly engaged. Dark, colourful, flexible enough for me. I guess music's like that,

There's a film of the adventure, as you can see from the cover. If anyone knows a place to watch it on the web, please say!

[Pohjolas Daughter]

Thomas Bauer and Siegfried Mauser took the train all the way from Moscow to Peking, stopping on the way to give Winterreise concerts. This is a warts and all recording and as far as I can see from online reviews, it has been universally panned by the cognoscenti - inflexible voice, not enough colour, not dark enough agressive piano playing, too operatic blah blah. 


I wonder whether we're listening to the same recording because I don't agree with any of those comments - I just find it absolutely irresistible, totally fascinating, both piano and voice thoroughly engaged. Dark, colourful, flexible enough for me. I guess music's like that,

There's a film of the adventure, as you can see from the cover. If anyone knows a place to watch it on the web, please say!

Mandryka,  there are two parts of the film/performances that have been uploaded to youtube.

The first mentioned is here: 

The second: 

Note:  They were uploaded by a "MsMandryka".  Any relationship? 

PD

[Mandryka]

@Jo498 I want you and to listen to this and tell me what you think. I'll tell you what I think - it's very cool! And I don't even speak German.

[MEDIA=spotify]track:4n3KyXFrhkualBbDcsJ02b[/MEDIA]

[URL unfurl="true"]https://static.qobuz.com/goodies/15/000137451.pdf[/URL]

[Jo498]

media-link does not work and I am not very fond of the saxophone, so I doubt I will listen to this without bias...

[Mandryka]

A young singer or pianist tackles Winterreise in order to learn. Before he realises it, he is totally immersed and fighting to reach an interpretation he can answer for. This is a lifetime task, for, like all majestic masterpieces, Winterreise has a vast number of facets and no single musician has ever been granted the privilege of getting all of them to sparkle. The greatest difficulty is to convince the audience that a man against his innate forthco-ming nature has become introspective and cannot bear to he near anyone else, for - as Kicrkegaard s pseudonym, Anti-Climacus, so tellingly expresses it - human compassion is a paltry invention . Only in the last song about the hurdy gurdy man does he become aware of a fellow crea-ture, who is in just as bad a way. He was certain that there was no way back from the goal he is on the watch for. Now he realises that there is a path to take
together with another outcast. Where the path leads, nobody knows.

Ulrik Cold , February 2004


Ye sick at heart, ye who only through pain learn that a man in another sense than an animal has a heart and what it means to suffer there, how it is that the physician may be right that one's heart is sound and that he yet he sick at heart; ye whom Faithlessness deceived and human compassion (for human compassion is seldom long in coming) made a target for mockery; all ye who have been treated unfairly, wronged, offended, and ill-used; all ye of noble minds, whom everyone will insist on telling that he deserved to reap ingratitude, for why were ye stupid enough to be noble, why foolish enough to be lovable, unselfish, and Faithful; all ye victims of cunning, deceit, calumny, and envy, whom baseness singled out and cowardice left in the lurch, whether ye be sacrificed in remote and lonely places after withdrawing to die or ye arc trampled under foot by the human throng, where no one asks what right ye have, no one asks what wrong ye suffer, where the pain is, or how it pains you, while the throng with animal health treads you in the dust: come hither!


From The Practice of Christianity by Anti-Climacus (Soren Kirkegaard)

Ulrik Cold's Kierkegaardian essay on Winterreise, from this CD


https://www.discogs.com/release/30693406-Franz-Schubert-Ulrik-Cold-Johannes-Mikkelsen-Winterreise

[Mandryka]

Ulrik Cold's Kierkegaardian essay on Winterreise, from this CD


https://www.discogs.com/release/30693406-Franz-Schubert-Ulrik-Cold-Johannes-Mikkelsen-Winterreise

I find myself intrigued by these comments from Ukrik Cold. I'm not sure he really succeeds in his (beautifully sung) version - it's as if he can't quite manage the conception he articulates in the essay.

However, Brigitte Fassbaender may have done it very well. What I mean, somehow convincingly project the image of someone who finds the world so much of a void, so bitter and alien, he rejects all human companionship.

[André]

Not my favourite but an excellent alternative option by the excellent light tenor Cyrille Dubois. His kind of voice will remind listeners of Anton Dermota (plangent steel) or even Léopold Simoneau (who never dared undertake Winterreise). The 1905 Bechstein is a perfect foil for the singer's wide-eyed, sweet yet ardent interpretation.



Very positive review in one of the major music publications: https://www.resmusica.com/2024/01/10/cyrille-dubois-et-anne-le-bozec-dans-un-winterreise-de-grande-qualite-nomadmusic/

Google translate is your friend !

[Mandryka]

Not my favourite but an excellent alternative option by the excellent light tenor Cyrille Dubois. His kind of voice will remind listeners of Anton Dermota (plangent steel) or even Léopold Simoneau (who never dared undertake Winterreise). The 1905 Bechstein is a perfect foil for the singer's wide-eyed, sweet yet ardent interpretation.



Very positive review in one of the major music publications: https://www.resmusica.com/2024/01/10/cyrille-dubois-et-anne-le-bozec-dans-un-winterreise-de-grande-qualite-nomadmusic/

Google translate is your friend !

Booklet here

https://static.qobuz.com/goodies/80/000161508.pdf