Greco And Helyard Take A Fresh Look At Winterreise On ABC Classics
Baritone David Greco and keyboard player Erin Helyard at the piano, present the first Australian recording of Schubert’s masterpiece Winterreise with a period piano.
Schubert’s Winterreise is one of the greatest song cycles ever written. Completed shortly before his death at just 33, it follows a young man, who spurned by his beloved, wanders through a frozen landscape in ever-increasing states of self-doubt, terror, and paranoia.
Erin Helyard and David Greco present a Winterreise that’s different from any you have heard before. A recording informed by scholarship around 19th-century performance techniques and the different vocal traditions and pianos that existed then, their performance demonstrates how the music might have sounded as created by Schubert with Erin playing a replica by Chris Maene (2016), of an 1817 Anton Graf piano.
Far from a dry, academic exercise, David and Erin strip away the stuffy, canonised aura of this famous work, presenting a Winterreise sung by a young man in the full fervour of love and all-consuming passion. This is a performance that captures Schubert’s terror and realisation of mortality, a vital and engrossing performance that takes a fresh new approach to a work you may have listened to many times before.
FRANZ SCHUBERT 1797–1828: Winterreise (Winter Journey), D911
1 Gute Nacht (Good Night)/ 2 Die Wetterfahne (The Weather Vane)/ 3 Gefror’ne Tränen (Frozen Tears)/ 4 Erstarrung (Frozen)/ 5 Der Lindenbaum (The Linden Tree)/6 Wasserflut (Deluge)/ 7 Auf dem Flusse (On the Stream)/8 Rückblick (Backward Glance)/9 Irrlicht (Will o’ the Wisp)/10 Rast (Rest)/11 Frühlingstraum (A Dream about Spring)/12 Einsamkeit (Loneliness)/13 Die Post (The Post)/14 Der greise Kopf (The Aged Head)/15 Die Krähe (The Crow)/16 Letzte Hoffnung (Last Hope)/17 Im Dorfe (In the Village)/18 Der stürmische Morgen (The Stormy Morning)/19 Täuschung (Illusion)/20 Der Wegweiser (The Signpost)/21 Das Wirtshaus (The Inn)/22 Mut! (Courage!)/23 Die Nebensonnen (Mock Suns)/24 Der Leiermann (The Organ-Grinder)
Album available 7 September 2018 | 1CD + Digital album | ABC 481 7470
