Franz Schubert: Winterreise

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Sandgata 15,
7500 Stjørdal

Franz Schubert: Winterreise

Description

Winterreise. When two artists of this calibre devote themselves to one of the best-known song cycles in classical literature, there is reason to listen. And when their interpretation, on top of that, breaks with a performance tradition decades old, the evening becomes an event. Wilhelm Müller's wanderer leaves his beloved's house on a winter night, an outcast at the beginning of his journey. What follows, Franz Schubert committed to paper in 1827 in 24 songs - one year before his death, in music of shattering directness. The performance tradition has over the decades made this into one single long descent: heavy, grey, hopeless. Marina Szudra and Ralf Schnell contradict this reading. They take each song seriously in its own right - and encounter an emotional world of enormous breadth. The tender warmth of the farewell in "Gute Nacht". The biting scorn in "Die Wetterfahne". The hot-headed bravado in "Die Post". The glowing anger in "Der stürmische Morgen". The almost grateful conversation with "Die Krähe". And finally "Der Leiermann": not a breakdown, but an encounter - fatalism, yes, but calm and composed. This reading is carried by a rare constellation. Ralf Schnell does not come from song accompaniment, but from the concert platform: as a celebrated interpreter of Brahms, Chopin and Rachmaninoff - "the best Chopin I have ever heard", said Karl Ulrich Schnabel of his playing - he treats Schubert's piano writing with the same seriousness and tonal differentiation as a great solo work. The piano becomes an equal partner: it comments, contradicts, drives forward, consoles. Marina Szudra, a sought-after soloist at significant concert and church music venues and equally at home in historically informed performance practice as in the classical and modern repertoire, brings her bright, clear voice into a cycle most often reserved for deep male voices - and opens it up to colours that surprise and fascinate. The two have performed "Winterreise" together several times. The concert is told as a continuous whole, without an interval. Programme: Schubert / Winterreise D 911