TLI Presents: Winterreise

Andrew Munn, bass Elenora Pertz, piano Franz SCHUBERT Winterreise

Franz Schubert’s devastating masterpiece Winterreise (“Winter’s Journey”), arguably the greatest of all Lieder cycles, traces the psychological and imagistic path of a lonely man setting off on his own after rejection by his hoped-for love, and in that rejection in turn rejects the company of society altogether. Based on poems by Wilhelm Müller (1794-1827)—whose texts Schubert had set for his great 1823 cycle Die schöne Müllerin—Winterreise was one of Schubert’s final works, and like his late chamber music, solo piano works, and symphonies, is as innovative and powerful a work as we find in all the aesthetic exploration and heightened individuality of the European Romantic century.