Winteriesse

Dear Doug,

Thanks for an enjoyable read, and I find that these discussions - as you noted - are quite as much about sorting out one's own ideas as as a cross-examination leads to a clear idea of the evidence!

On my magnet thing, it was a rather limited analogy. None of us can be described as a North pole or a South! Definitely there are things that appeal to one person and not to another. That is where the magnet analogy fails. 

I am not a renown optimist, though in spite of this, I remain surprising more content in life even than many optimists know. I am more or less a stoic, and that is something that lends a resolution in facing off life's darker events. I did write a post that I late I deleted, as I thought it somewhat too personal [and possibly it might have sounded self-indulgent, and followed the last one I wrote still there], but enough to say that I have dealt with tremendous sadness very close to me in family terms ... I have also been deprived of my playing by a tendon condition in my left hand that was only brought on by playing. To loose that was at the time, quite a lesson in what really matters in life  ...

Before these things happened I was definitely more of a romantic in my musical tastes. In reality I suspect that I am far from unique in that my musical tastes have evolved almost continually, mostly gradually, and at one point rather quickly. The moment of reckoning was when I was crashed off my bike by a car pulling into the main road, which I was on. I was broadsided, and there is no getting out of the way of that how-ever defensively one rides a bike. Since then I have given up riding a bike on urban roads except when there is only the lightest traffic. This showed me something that I had not really pondered before. There but for good fate, do I go. Today tomorrow, thirty years time. The moment of truth is not in our hands - we can take reasonable precautions, but we cannot guarantee anything with complete certainty. After that I learned that nobody who is trying to manipulate or bully me should be heeded, and that does frustrate those who might try! But they give up when they see it water off a duck's back!

Anyway enough of this. Here is a piece of music that almost always brings a damp eye, sometimes more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyAYj1erBW4

"Matthäuspassion, BWV 244: Mache dich, mein Herze, rein" by Gustav Leonhardt

I have this most beautiful recording to sit beside the old Jacques recording with Ferrier, the Klemperer on EMI, and also the Stephen Cleobury. This is an example of highly emotional music, but for certain in a style that formalised the emotion within a remarkably firm framework of stylistic bounds on any possible histrionic aspect. I find this kind of pent up and formalised emotion to be devastatingly powerful. I also am quite unable to attend live concerts of this, these days. It seems infinitely more powerful in the context of a real performance than from replayed performances at home, where I can mostly contain myself, and if I do not, then what off it!

Very best wishes from George

I have to confess, I'd not heard of Winteriesse, but I've ordered the Mattias Goerne recording, as I have a very good Eisler recording of his. Let's see how it goes.....

Dear Nigel,

Please do report your response to this.

I think we are all different - shaped by birth and our subsequent experiences - and so with such a great artistic statement as the Winter Journey [note that I have given up trying to spell this in German!] you may well love it ...

Thanks for your post!

ATB from George

Today I confirmed again to myself what is so special about this music for me.  No, I didn't listen to Winterreise but I dug out my score of Schubert's vocal music which has Die Schöne Müllerin, Winterreise, Schwanengesang and 24 other songs.  Then I found my Liszt transcriptions of Schwanengesang, 12 of the 24 works from Winterreise plus numerous songs.  This is such a joy and highlight of any day when I do this.

First thing I note is that without some singer doing the work for you that this music is highly attractive (and maybe even more so) on its own.  The melody pours out from the soul and these works are like the hymn book of life.  There are love songs, happy songs, sad songs and bleak songs.  I am not a singer but I simply find them very easy to hum along or possibly for the bolder person who could sing in the shower.

Gute Nacht (Good Night) which opens the Winterreise is such a wonderful piece of music on its own.  Sadness tempered with hope.  Schubert achieves this mood by starting and ending in D minor but shifts to D major in the middle section which symbolically is the signal of some sort of positive hope here.  

Wintereise ends with Der Leiermann (The Organ-Grinder) which is so shockingly bleak and sparsely written the tension or pain is palpable.

I would highly recommend anyone who likes piano music in and of itself that they explore some of the Liszt piano transcriptions of these works of Schubert.  There are many great discs out there to recommend but I would start with this disc from Dora Deliyska.  Only one Winterreise work (Der Leiermann) on it but a nice cross section of different lieder otherwise.  This is music you listen to alone or at most with one other like minded person and late at night/early in the morning (without distractions).  If you like it then enough said, you will continue on exploring.  For instance, you would find out the story of Margaret at the Spinning-wheel (Gretchen am Spinnrade) and then understand why the piano score was written this way (ie. parts representing the actual spinning wheel mechanism and the voice of this person working / speaking through her dilemma / struggle and who is this man?  

The Erlkönig is just a fascinating story with four voices speaking in turn throughout.  If you know this, you can actually hear the different voices in how Liszt / Schubert created the piece.  I could talk about this music day and night as it just excites me so much how simple yet profound this music is with all its secrets.

If you don't connect then it is not a huge loss.  Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

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Der Doppelgänger (Schubert/Liszt):  Dora Deliyska (Piano)