SCHUBERT: WINTERREISE

December 8, 2021 | Bohemian National Hall

Tyler Duncan baritone
Erika Switzer piano

Illustrated talk by Christopher Gibbs

Schubert – Winterreise

Photographs by Joe Jenkins © 2021

‘I like these songs better than all the others, and you will come to like them too.’ Such was Schubert’s response when some friends criticized the gloomy character of Winterreise (‘Winter Journey’). Nearly 200 years later many people view Schubert’s setting of twenty-four poems by Wilhelm Müller as the supreme Romantic song cycle. Winterreise traces the stark psychological journey of a solitary protagonist, someone isolated and alienated from society. The anonymous wanderer, we learn in the opening song, arrived in town a stranger and now departs one as well. The inexorable journey through the winter landscape, ending with the despairing ‘Der Leiermann’ (‘The Organ Grinder’), reflects far more than the dismayed musings of a jilted lover – these devastating songs register life at the limits.