Customer Reviews

Zender--Schuberts "Winterreise": Eine komponierte Interpretation

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Upon first listening to Hans Zender's "Composed Interpretation" of this work, I thought: No! This is terrible! A travesty! I want nothing to do with it! But listening on through the recording I soon changed my mind to think: This is very interesting indeed. It is a perfectly valid interpretation, and one I like. Now, I admire and cherish Schubert's great masterpiece the way he wrote it; but an interpretaton such as this, which helps us to understand just how harrowing (schauerlich)Schubert's contemporaries found it, is valid, interesting and very helpful in understanding that there are so many facets to any great work. Some we notice ourselves, and others which have to be pointed out to us, some we might not be comfortable with and even ones which the composer might not have actually intended - just as Brahms made his own version of Haydn's "St Anthony" chorale, and as Ravel superimposed his own personality onto Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an exhibition".
Purists will say that Herr Zender is wrong to do this. But I am sure he is not trying to say to us that his verson is an improvement on Schubert's original. He is merely showing us the piece from an unusual and fascinating angle. Hans Zender's "Composed Interpretation" of Schubert's "Winterreise" deserves to be heard by a wide audience. I myself intend to perform it within the next two years.

Hans Zender really loves Schubert's "Winterreise", and it shows. This is a work, (yes, he has worked on the music, with respect, with care, with new ears), not a joke. And it is not destructive, not boring, not pseudo-intellectual. I've found great joy in listening to it, being challenged by the new palette of sounds. And they are always used with imagination and taste.
Isn't it amazing how many ways there are of relating to a song, a melody, an oeuvre?. Other reviewer has felt insulted by this interpretation. Well, his loss. Do approach this record with a fresh, inquiring mind, and you will find that there is enough place in the world for both, the original, much-loved piano and voice version, and this, chamber-orchestrated (and beautifully sung) one. What's more, each one enhances the qualities of the other. Wonderful.

Speaking about Hans Zender's composed interpretation of Franz Schubert's "Winterreise", the booklet names it a "highly original approach". Actually, when I listen to that, I can only see a poor, vain and boring accoustic illustration of an intemporal masterwork THAT DOESN'T NEED to be illustrated ! "Die Winterreise" is one of the most complete works in the lied's history and I still can't undersand how Christoph Prégardien (who offered us a fantastic interpretation of the "genuine" Winterreise with A. Steier/pianoforte) could agree to get involved into this destructive approach of Schubert. In fact, I find all this really sad because it shows, in a way, the poorness and lack of creativity of a composer compelled to use (and abuse) of other composers' great works to bring new ideas. That's a waste of time, talent and money. And it's not even a joke; all that stuff is very serious, pseudo-intellectual and supposed to be deep.