Franz Schubert composed his epic song cycle, Winterreise, “Winter Journey,” a setting of Wilhelm Müller’s narrative poetry, in two parts, each with 12 songs, in February and October of 1827. Schubert was still correcting the proofs in preparation for publication days before his death on November 19, 1928. Winterreise is a memory piece, the internal monologue of a man who has returned to the town where he first fell in love, who, as he wanders presently in the cold of winter, his tears freezing as they fall on his cheeks, recalls a life of what might have been. True to the Romantic Era, each of the 24 songs in the cycle is its own psychological treatise and reflection of the human experience in our natural world.
Winterreise is Schubert’s potent melodic distillation in which he transformed forever the nature of the relationship between singer and pianist into a collaborative partnership, giving equal importance to the pianistic expression of emotion and drama in the story. The piano tone-paints the wind in the trees, the vividly rushing water under the ice, the singing birds, baying dogs, the grating rusty weathervane, the post horn calling, the drone and repeated melody of the hurdy-gurdy. The poet internalizes all these phenomena, and equates them with his own emotions in the telling.
“As a stranger I came, and as a stranger I depart.” So begins the journey of heartbreak, hallucination, struggle, hope, elation, resignation, and transcendence. Parts I and II each have individual dramatic arc, Schubert composed them as such, but also represent a continuum together. Part I covers the sequence from leaving his beloved’s house to the resigned solitude of the soul of the wanderer. Part II documents the torments of reawakened hope and the path to resignation. The singer Elena Gerhardt said of Winterreise, “You have to be haunted by this cycle to be able to sing it.” Each performance will include media bringing to life the experience of the journey for the audience.