Kurzbeschreibung

Written in 1828, in the last months of the young Schubert's life, Winterreise ("Winter's Journey"), has come to be considered the single greatest piece of music ever written for the male solo voice. Deceptively Brief - the twenty-four short poems are performed uninterrupted in 70 minutes - it nonetheless has an emotional depth and power that no music of its kind has ever equaled.

Rezension

"Exquisite ....The tenor and, it transpires, fine writer Ian Bostridge is a great guide to the mysterious winter-scape and supreme symbiosis of word and music, the marrying and tussling of piano and vocal lines, which Schubert took to hitherto unimaginable musical and emotional planes. Bostridge's engaging mélange of memoir, cultural history, close musical reading, glimpses of biography and wide-reaching examples of the ripple effect of Winterreise's influence on writers, composers, historians, and thinkers ever since - including Beckett, Benjamin Britten, Djuna Barnes, Paul Auster, Thomas Mann, and Slavojiek makes a strong case for Winterreise being as deserving of a place in our common experience 'as the poetry of Shakespeare and Dante, the paintings of Van Gogh and Pablo Picasso, the novels of the Brontë sisters or Marcel Proust.'" (Rebecca K. Morrison, The Independent, UK)

"Illuminating and comprehensive. ... rich, highly readable." (Kirkus)

"Bostridge's illuminating reflections will guide readers as they listen again, or for the first time, to the nuances of Schubert's great work." (Publisher's Weekly)

"Usually great singers cannot explain what they do. Ian Bostridge can. Whether or not you know Schubert's Winter Journey, the book is gripping because it explains, in probing, simple words, how doomed love is transformed into art." (Richard Sennett)

Klappentext

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.