Customer Reviews

Schubert: Winterreise (Live from Wigmore Hall)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The only things I would have changed are the introductory and concluding applause, at least placing them on separate tracks. Other than that, the audience doesn't once get in the way. As for the performance, it easily trumphs each performer's previous recording -- Matthias Goerne with Graham Johnson, and Alfred Brendel with Dietrich Fischer Dieskau. The sound is very good. There are many moments of very touching intimacy. Quietude, introspection, prayer. Pianism is very good, very well phrased, very well balances. The singing is astonishing. I found myself breathless, nearly in tears -- maybe because this is my favorite song cycle, maybe because Matthias Goerne is my favorite vocalist. Regardless, this is a flawless and very powerful interpretation, to which I'm sure to find myself returning more than any other for quite awhile. I own many recordings of this work (3 Dieskau, 3 Hotter, 2 Prey, Hampson, Bar, Souzay, Vickers, Pears, Quasthoff, Greindl, Schmidt, Patzak, 2 Goerne) and this is my favorite.

This live 2004 performance of Schubert's "Winterreise" has caused different reactions. In parts of old Europe, it has been hailed as something very special. By contrast, in the US, some reviewers have had great difficulties with Goerne's style, claiming that he rather whispers and shouts instead of actually singing.

Considering the latter opinion, it is clear that Goerne has his own style. But what's the problem with that? One reviewer here at amazon says that Schubert's "Winterreise" has its "greatest impact when sung with unaffected emootional [sic!] directness". Dan Davis at Classicstoday says that Goerne's performance is "still marred by overinterpretation that, while apparently deeply felt, comes off as self-regarding." He also thinks that Goerne occasionally adopts a "quasi-sprechstimme style" in his performance.

Apparently these guys hold the view that there are great restrictions in interpreting Schubert's "Winterreise". You're out of bounds if you dare to do something personal with it.

When I listen to this performance I cannot see that this objection is relevant. Goerne and Brendel is an ideal match, as in the cases of Pears/Britten, Fischer-Dieskau/Moore, and Hotter/Moore. All these recordings make sense to me, in their own ways. Together with Hans Hotter's recording, however, I think this is the most personal and disturbing performance that I have heard - "disturbing" in the sense of moving; that the particular mood of these desolated songs actually is transmitted through the interpretation as such. It is of course possible to sing "Winterreise" with a beautiful tone, more or less ignoring the content of Müller's poems. For example, Fischer-Dieskau often strikes me as more focussed on his beautiful tone than on the bitter moods in the traveller's songs. By contrast, I think that Goerne/Brendel and Hotter/Moore perform this work as it represents its own world to us.

This is a contemporary "Winterreise" for our times. That means that it articulates a performance of Schubert's work that is both representative and highly individualistic. Not even Hotter took it as far as Goerne. This is of course chocking to some people. But it could be seen as perfectly consistent with the work's internal structure.

Sound is fine, audience is mainly quiet, Brendel's playing is superb.

Highly recommended!

Winterreise is the ultimate challenge to a lieder singer, and this is Goerne's second version in less than a decade. From the outset I had my doubts. Goerne's dreamy, creamy voice is seductively beautiful, but a crushed velvet timbre isn't an asset in Schubert, whose songs make their greatest impact when sung with unaffected emootional directness. Artistically, Goerne favors long, often slow legato lyricism, again not an asset in music that should never sound like swooning salon entertainment. One can set against these deficits the singer's serious commitment to the endangered species of lieder, and his thorough musicality.

The results are mixed. Goerne croons too much for my taste -- he seems at times like a Victorian poet caught between love affairs. On the plus side, the singer doesn't agonizingly overinterpret every word, as does Ian Bostridge. Brendel provides suitably soft-grained accompaniments; there's no doubt about the blend between piano and voice. I yearned for more starkness and raw hurt. Those qualities rarely arrived, so in the end what we have is a quality product that is impeccably polished but rarely moving at the level of Peter Pears and Benjamin Britten in their incomparable account from the Sixties.

P.S. May 2009 -- On relistening, I underestimated Goerne's artistry. This Winterreise deserved four stars, not three.

I won't dwell on the performances here, as they have been well covered by other reviewers. Suffice to say that they are both excellent, as one might expect, and refreshingly devoid of the mannerism and show-boating of some other well-known contemporary readings. Goerne sings in the Fischer-Dieskau tradition, without aping him; something that clearly attracted Brendel to him, sensing a fellow Romantic who, like Brendel, feels (and conveys) real pain and a rich palette of emotion in this repertoire.

What I do feel the need to comment on, however, is the poems. In the Amazon review, they are described as "literary dross". While Schubert did set his fair share of dross, these poems are not among them, and to underestimate or even to dismiss them would be a mistake. Study them closely, and you will see what attracted Schubert so powerfully. They are full of subtleties and insights; they are also far from the passive, comfortable Romantic essay that others seem to see. Schubert would never have set them with such intense care had he not seem something of intrinsic value in them, and he was right. "Der Leiermann" alone is a poem of great sparseness with an almost modernist sense of dislocation. The more closely you study the score, the clearer it becomes that Schubert saw something in these poems that gave him the opportunity and the artistic space to produce his greatest work in this genre, which is really saying something. So give Müller the credit that is his due, and look a few notches below the surface, as Schubert himself did. There is much there to reward you. And enjoy a splendid reading by two masters of the art.

An amazing performance. Goerne's color and warmth are unmatchable. His voice is not fixed: baritone and beautiful. Brendel's playing is amazing as well. My favorite performance.