Concert “Winter Journey”

A song cycle after poems by Wilhelm Müller. Schubert’s “Winter Journey” (“Winterreise”) is an immensely moving work. From the memoirs of Josef von Spaun we know that these songs caused shock and unease when Schubert played and sang them for his closest friends for the first time. It is impossible to listen to this cycle as background music, because one is irresistibly drawn into the hero’s pain and anger. “When I wanted to sing of love, it turned to pain for me, and when I wanted to sing of pain, it turned to love. Thus love and pain tore me apart.”