CD of the week
Track Listing:
Schubert: Winterreise (Winter Journey), D911: Gute Nacht (Good Night)
Die Wetterfahne (The Weather Vane)
Gefror’ne Tränen (Frozen Tears)
Erstarrung (Frozen)
Der Lindenbaum (The Linden Tree)
Wasserflut (Deluge)
Auf dem Flusse (On the Stream)
Rückblick (Backward Glance)
Irrlicht (Will o’ the Wisp)
Rast (Rest)
Frühlingstraum (A Dream about Spring)
Einsamkeit (Loneliness)
Die Post (The Post)
Der greise Kopf (The Aged Head)
Die Krähe (The Crow)
Letzte Hoffnung (Last Hope)
Im Dorfe (In the Village)
Der stürmische Morgen (The Stormy Morning)
Täuschung (Illusion)
Der Wegweiser (The Signpost)
Das Wirtshaus (The Inn)
Mut! (Courage!)
Die Nebensonnen (Mock Suns)
Der Leiermann (The Organ-Grinder)
CD of the Week – David Greco & Erin Helyard: Winterreise
David Greco (baritone), Erin Helyard (piano)
One of the greatest song cycles ever written, Schubert’s Winterreise follows a young man spurned by his beloved who wanders through a frozen landscape in ever-increasing states of existential angst, terror and paranoia.
Erin Helyard and David Greco present a Winterreise that’s different from any you've heard before. This is how the work might have sounded to Schubert, a recording informed by scholarship around 19th-century performance techniques, and the different vocal traditions and pianos that existed then. But far from a dry, academic exercise, David and Erin strip away the stuffy, canonised aura of this famous work, presenting a Winterreise sung by a young man in the full fervour of love and an all-consuming passion. This is a performance that captures every moment of Schubert’s terror and mortality, a vital and utterly engrossing recording that takes you inside a work you’ve listened to many times before – but never truly heard.