Schubert composed his cycle of 24 songs ‘Winterreise’ (Winter Journey) near the end of his short life. It is an expressive sequence setting verses by Wilhelm Müller.
Ian Bostridge performing Winterreise | Photo © Claire Egan
As presented by tenor Ian Bostridge, it became a theatrical psychodrama that explored the extremes of emotion and musical expression.
Bostridge collaborated with director Deborah Warner and pianist Julius Drake to present a narrative which owed more to German expressionist theatre or cabaret than to the conventional ‘stand-and-deliver’ song recital.
The singer probably knows the piece better than anyone nowadays, with over 100 performances, a film and a book to his credit. We first saw his character – wild-eyed, dishevelled – crouching in the corner of a space which he was to inhabit as a highly mobile actor, stamping, leaping, cowering, gesturing as the text led him.
Minimal props and discreet surtitles told part of the story: the rest was all in the music.
The performers took their respective instruments to the limits: Drake’s piano-playing hectic, majestic and sentimental by turns, and always responsive to the voice.
Bostridge brought an astonishing range of vocal colours, bending note-values (and occasionally pitches) and borrowing stylistic elements from popular music.
The audience was left at the end to wonder about the appearance of the mysterious figure in the final song, delivered by Bostridge as a kind of folk improvisation, both affecting and effective.
Despite moments of challenging listening – some tempi were very slow, some fortissimo sections overloud for the Ustinov Studio – this was a riveting theatrical and musical experience.
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Reviewer: Niall Hoskin
