This recording of Winterreise was made in two days during a pandemic, using a modern Steinway piano due to the difficulty of finding a Schubert-period instrument.
Compositional Technique
Winterreise was originally written for high voice, like most of Schubert's over 600 Lieder, but baritones often transpose it down a step or a minor third.
Composition History
Franz Schubert, the composer, first sang Winterreise himself for his friends while in his twenties, suffering from a terminal disease and aware of his impending death.
Notable Performances
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, a baritone, set the standard for performing Winterreise soon after World War II and made eight commercial recordings of the cycle.
Cultural Impact
Winterreise is considered a monument of the vocal repertoire, with over 579 commercial recordings displayed on the website winterreise.online.
Historical Context
Schubert's world, when he composed Winterreise, was marked by royal crackdowns against democratic tendencies and a cultural fascination with melancholy and suicide, influenced by Goethe's novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther.
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