Organization

Singer

Florian Boesch

Soloist

Lighting designer

Franz Tscheck

Set designer

Ingo Kerkhove

Pianist

Malcolm Martineau

Stage director

MusikTheater an der Wien

Frank Storm

German

Winterreise, D. 911 -  (Winter Journey)

Vienna

Austria

Theater an der Wien

Winterreise Schubert

Public

Winter Journey

Approved

A year before his death, Schubert completed the song cycle Winterreise based on texts by Wilhelm Müller. The theme of wandering runs through all of Romanticism, and the fact that the miller's wanderings are supposed to be pleasure goes back directly to the poet Wilhelm Müller, who is still literary in the shadow of Heinrich Heine today. The beautiful Müllerin , Schubert's first song cycle, also after Wilhelm Müller, still reveals a chronological plot. The Winter Journey , written five years lateris a series of associations that a traveler encounters on his trek. Looking at Müller's biography, the subject does not appear entirely coincidental: as a voluntary chasseur in the Prussian army, the young Wilhelm Müller was quickly promoted to the rank of lieutenant and just as quickly was dishonorably discharged when he fell in love with a Jewish merchant's wife in Brussels. Deprived of all hope, Müller marched back alone and on foot from Brussels to Berlin in the middle of winter. The doomed Schubert congenially transferred Müller's basic mood into music: in the heart of the wanderer there is permanent winter, only at night does he remember happier days, oscillating between torpor and futile longing for a better life. When Schubert began setting Müller's poems to music in February 1827, he was already terminally ill with syphilis. His friend and supporter Joseph von Spaun experienced Schubert in a gloomy mood during this time, and he seemed physically challenged. When Schubert in private circles his friends theWinterreise "with a moving voice", Spaun was "completely amazed at the somber mood of these songs". Schubert himself, who had announced Winterreise as "a cycle of horrific songs", liked "these songs more than all of them, and you will like them too." In the wide repertoire of baritone Florian Boesch, the song has a very special place, for him is his personal passion. In his recitals, Boesch does not look for the pose, but for his subtle personal approach: "The Winter Journey is not a challenge in terms of singing, but in terms of interpretation."

English

Winter Journey by Schubert, From (2022/2022), Directed by Ingo Kerkhove,, Theater an der Wien, Vienna, Austria

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