Ihre Favourite Winterreise

[Mandryka]

Aksel Schiøtz Carnegie Hall, 1964 (He was born in 1906)
Really touching - no technique or fire, not even great poetic nuance, but somehow gentle and humane.

[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.