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A Winter's Journey

Allan Clayton stands in front of a piano at which Kate Golla sits, with a pink landscape by Fred Williams OBE projected on a screen behind them

As a production of Schubert’s Winterreise travels halfway across the globe, we explore the universality of its themes.

Winterreise is a portrait in landscape. In this version, the luminous Australian landscapes of Fred Williams offer the wanderer no more comfort than the snowy European panoramas evoked by Schubert and Müller. By surrounding this Romantic-era winter journey with Williams’s 20th-century images, we make no attempt to transplant the action from northern to southern hemisphere; rather, we aim to celebrate the timelessness and universality of Schubert’s great work.

The description ’song-cycle’ suits Schubert’s Winterreise both literally and metaphorically. The wanderer’s obsessive journeying through these 24 songs leads him not to an end but rather an inescapable return to the beginning. In the final, exhausted stanza he invites the shabby organ-grinder – perhaps his alter-ego? – to wander alongside him, accompanying his song. This sense of an unending journey underpins the monodrama, offering a portal to its staged performance and an insight into the wanderer’s relationship with the audience.

The narrative of Winterreise is in the mind of the wanderer. The randomness of the song sequence makes his storytelling erratic, confessional, compulsive. He needs us to try and understand his outsider mind. He seeks our empathy for his inner struggles, yet is unapologetic about his strange choices, his pain, his outbursts, his odd behaviour, all set against an indifferent landscape. This is indeed a profoundly troubled man, burning with bitterness and shame at society’s rejection, at being pitied by his former lover’s family. As he walks, he talks to the wind, the ice, the trees, the frozen river, his tears and – constantly – to his own heart. The imagery he conjures up is disturbing: the town’s ’crows’ throwing snowballs and hailstones at him; his own disembodied heart under the river ice. He is fascinated by a crow wheeling overhead and is darkly amused at the prospect of being eaten as carrion. There is an anarchic wildness in his solitude yet, in contrast, tenderness in his song to the linden tree, and rapture in the prayer-like, though hallucinatory, ’Die Nebensonnen’.

To turn this internal chaos into a dramatic arc there is no finer singer/actor than Allan Clayton. Perhaps there is something of Hamlet – another of Clayton’s outsiders as powerfully conjured in Brett Dean’s opera of the same name – in the wanderer’s existential angst. No matter what the setting, the enigma of Winterreise flows from the fact that, from its first performance in 1828 to today’s in the digital age, the character of the wanderer remains unknowable, his journey emotionally epic, Schubert’s music exquisite.

Lindy Hume director

 

About the music:

The lieder (songs) of Franz Schubert lie at the foundation of the art-song genre itself; and at the pinnacle of Schubert’s prodigious output in this field stands Winterreise, a song-cycle remarkable for its vivid musical portraits of the human heart smarting from the pains of love lost, and stoically resigned to the approach of death.

Conceived as a journey into the cold of winter, it sets to music a selection of poems by Wilhelm Müller published in 1823 and 1824 under the title 77 Poems from the Posthumous Papers of a Travelling Horn- Player. Unlike the composer’s previous song-cycle Die schöne Müllerin (setting texts by the same poet), Winterreise presents more a series of vignettes than a plot, as all of the important action has taken place before the narration begins. The narrator–singer is heard in conversation with his own heart, by turns reflective, questioning, ironic and finally resigned. In this speculative frame of mind, he drifts fluidly between the world of his dreams and the bitter reality he faces.

At issue is a love affair gone wrong. The wanderer’s beloved has broken off their relationship to marry a richer man, leaving him despairing and alone with his thoughts, which travel through dark territory as he traverses village and country settings after leaving her house.

The work was composed in two separate parts in 1827, the year before Schubert’s death, making the terminal illness from which he was suffering one obvious point of reference. But the poems from Wilhelm Müller’s collection provide apt imagery for such a presentation of moods, with their recurring themes of loneliness and isolation, watchwords of the emerging Romantic movement in art.

The cast of characters with whom the narrator interacts are elements of the natural landscape (sun, wind, trees and leaves, flowers, rivers and snow, crows and ravens), elements that form symbolic company for his journey. Schubert’s achievement in setting these poems is to give musical life to these images, not only in the contours of the singer’s melody, but especially in the pictorial vividness of the piano score. Frequently, the piano serves as an equal partner, conjuring, through the vividness of Schubert’s writing, the external surroundings through which the singer travels.

And yet a paradox pervades this piano score. It is both richly allusive and unusually austere. Benjamin Britten, in discussing Schubert’s artistry, outlined the performers’ challenge in these terms:

’One of the most alarming things I always find, when performing this work, is that there is actually so little on the page. He gets the most extraordinary moods and atmospheres with so few notes. And there aren’t any gloriously wishy-washy arpeggios to help you. You’ve got to create the mood by these few chords. He leaves it all very much up to the performers.’

© Donald G Gíslason
Vancouver Recital Society

Programme and performers

Franz Schubert Winterreise
1. Gute Nacht (Good night)
2. Die Wetterfahne (The weathervane)
3. Gefror’ne Tränen (Frozen tears)
4. Erstarrung (Numbness)
5. Der Lindenbaum (The linden tree)
6. Wasserflut (Flood)
7. Auf dem Flusse (On the river)
8. Rückblick (A backwards glance)
9. Irrlicht (Will-o’-the-wisp)
10. Rast (Rest)
11. Frühlingstraum (Dream of Spring)
12. Einsamkeit (Loneliness)
13. Die Post (The mail-coach)
14. Der greise Kopf (The hoary head)
15. Der Krähe (The crow)
16. Letzte Hoffnung (Last hope)
17. Im Dorfe (In the village)
18. Der stürmische Morgen (The stormy morning)
19. Täuschung (Delusion)
20. Der Wegweiser (The signpost)
21. Das Wirtshaus (The inn)
22. Mut! (Courage!)
23. Die Nebensonnen (Phantom suns)
24. Der Leiermann (The organ-grinder)
 

Allan Clayton tenor
Kate Golla piano

Lindy Hume director
David Bergman videographer
Fred Williams OBE (1927–1982) images
Paul Kildea artistic director

Translations

Gute Nacht
Fremd bin ich eingezogen,
Fremd zieh’ ich wieder aus.
Der Mai war mir gewogen
Mit manchem Blumenstrauss.
Das Mädchen sprach von Liebe,
Die Mutter gar von Eh’ –
Nun ist die Welt so trübe,
Der Weg gehüllt in Schnee.

Ich kann zu meiner Reisen
Nicht wählen mit der Zeit:
Muss selbst den Weg mir weisen
In dieser Dunkelheit.
Es zieht ein Mondenschatten
Als mein Gefährte mit,
Und auf den weissen Matten
Such’ ich des Wildes Tritt.

Was soll ich länger weilen,
Dass man mich trieb’ hinaus?
Lass irre Hunde heulen
Vor ihres Herren Haus!
Die Liebe liebt das Wandern,
Gott hat sie so gemacht –
Von einem zu dem andern –
Fein Liebchen, gute Nacht.

Will dich im Traum nicht stören,
Wär’ Schad’ um deine Ruh’,
Sollst meinen Tritt nicht hören –
Sacht, sacht die Türe zu!
Schreib’ im Vorübergehen
An’s Tor dir gute Nacht,
Damit du mögest sehen,
An dich hab’ ich gedacht.

Good night
I arrived a stranger,
A stranger I depart.
May blessed me
With many a bouquet of flowers.
The girl spoke of love,
Her mother even of marriage;
Now the world is so desolate,
The path concealed beneath snow.

I cannot choose the time
For my journey;
I must find my own way
In this darkness.
A shadow thrown by the moon
Is my companion;
And on the white meadows
I seek the tracks of deer.

Why should I tarry longer
And be driven out?
Let stray dogs howl
Before their master’s house.
Love delights in wandering –
God made it so –
From one to another.
Beloved, good night!

I will not disturb you as you dream,
It would be a shame to spoil your rest.
You shall not hear my footsteps;
Softly, softly the door is closed.
As I pass I write
‘Good night’ on your gate,
So that you might see
That I thought of you.

Rückblick
Es brennt mir unter beiden Sohlen,
Tret’ ich auch schon auf Eis und Schnee,
Ich möcht’ nicht wieder Atem holen,
Bis ich nicht mehr die Türme seh’.

Hab’ mich an jeden Stein gestossen,
So eilt’ ich zu der Stadt hinaus;
Die Krähen warfen Bäll’ und Schlossen
Auf meinen Hut von jedem Haus.

Wie anders hast du mich empfangen,
Du Stadt der Unbeständigkeit!
An deinen blanken Fenstern sangen
Die Lerch’ und Nachtigall im Streit.

Die runden Lindenbäume blühten,
Die klaren Rinnen rauschten hell,
Und ach, zwei Mädchenaugen glühten! –
Da war’s geschehn um dich, Gesell!

Kommt mir der Tag in die Gedanken,
Möcht’ ich noch einmal rückwärts sehn,
Möcht’ ich zurücke wieder wanken,
Vor ihrem Hause stille stehn.

A backwards glance
The soles of my feet are burning,
Though I walk on ice and snow;
I do not wish to draw breath again
Until I can no longer see the towers.

I tripped on every stone,
Such was my hurry to leave the town;
The crows threw snowballs and hailstones
On to my hat from every house.

How differently you received me.
Town of inconstancy!
At your shining windows
Lark and nightingale sang in rivalry.

The round linden trees blossomed,
The clear fountains plashed brightly,
And, ah, a maiden’s eyes glowed;
Then, friend, your fate was sealed.

When that day comes to my mind
I should like to look back once more,
And stumble back
To stand before her house.

Im Dorfe
Es bellen die Hunde, es rasseln die Ketten.
Es schlafen die Menschen in ihren Betten,
Träumen sich manches, was sie nicht haben,
Tun sich im Guten und Argen erlaben;

Und morgen früh ist Alles zerflossen –
Je nun, sie haben ihr Teil genossen,
Und hoffen, was sie noch übrig liessen,
Doch wieder zu finden auf ihren Kissen.

Bellt mich nur fort, ihr wachen Hunde,
Lasst mich nicht ruhn in der Schlummerstunde!
Ich bin zu Ende mit allen Träumen –
Was will ich unter den Schläfern säumen?

In the village
Dogs bark, chains rattle;
People sleep in their beds,
Dreaming of many a thing they do not possess,
Consoling themselves with the good and the bad.

And tomorrow morning all will have vanished.
Well, they have enjoyed their share,
And hope to find on their pillows
What they still have left to savour.

Drive me away with your barking, watchful dogs;
Allow me no rest in this hour of sleep!
I am finished with all dreams.
Why should I linger among slumberers?

Wilhelm Müller (1794–1827)

Translations © Richard Wigmore

Artist biographies

The flexibility and consistency of Allan Clayton’s vocal range, combined with a magnetic stage presence, have led to international acclaim in music from Baroque to contemporary. This breadth is demonstrated in recent title-roles, which range from Albert Herring and Hamlet to Faust, Candide and, most recently, his lauded portrayal of Peter Grimes at both the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and the Metropolitan Opera, New York.

He has worked in leading opera houses around the world. Highlights include his debut at the Metropolitan Opera, New York, earlier this year in the title-role of Brett Dean’s Hamlet, the work’s US premiere; David (The Mastersingers of Nuremberg) at the Royal Opera House and Bavarian State Opera, Ferdinand (Miranda) at Paris’s Opéra Comique, and appearing in several Barrie Kosky productions for the Komische Oper Berlin, such as Tamino (The Magic Flute), Castor (Castor et Pollux), Jupiter (Semele) and the title-role in Candide.

He has appeared at the BBC Proms 10 times since his first visit in 2008 in repertoire ranging from Handel to Stravinsky, including the world premiere of Gerald Barry’s Canada in 2017. In recent concerts here at the Barbican, he has sung in Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius and Britten’s Spring Symphony under Sakari Oramo, Sir Mark Elder and Sir Simon Rattle.

He has performed at Wigmore Hall many times during his career, including curating a Britten series. He has given song recitals around the world, in repertoire ranging from Schubert to contemporary music, with several composers writing song-cycles for him, including Mark-Anthony Turnage and Josephine Stephenson. An advocate for contemporary music, he has appeared in world premieres of Sir George Benjamin’s Written on Skin, Jonathan Dove’s The Adventures of Pinocchio and Gerald Barry’s Alice’s Adventures Under Ground.

Recent performances include Beethoven’s An die ferne Geliebte with the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra under Andrew Manze; H K Gruber’s Frankenstein!! at the Royal Opera House; and Britten’s Serenade with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Pekka Kuusisto. In 2020 he took part in Glyndebourne’s Garden Opera series with In the Market for Love, an updated version of Offenbach’s Mesdames de la Halle. Last year saw his role debut as Peter Grimes in a new production by Deborah Warner at Teatro Real in Madrid; the role of Jim Mahoney in Barrie Kosky’s new staging of Weill’s The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny for Komische Oper Berlin; a major residency at Snape Maltings; and Oedipus rex at the Spoleto Festival.