Peter Mattei has won great acclaim as a singer with unusual dramatic gifts, appearing on the world's leading stages in complex operatic roles such as Don Giovanni, Billy Budd and Eugene Onegin. On the present release he takes on a no less complex character in the Lieder canon: the traveller in Schubert's Winterreise. In this cycle, Schubert returned to the poet Wilhelm MÃ¼ller, whose poems he had set some years earlier, in his other great song cycle, Die schÃ¶ne MÃ¼llerin. MÃ¼ller's texts revolve around a young man who after being rejected leaves his village and heads into the desolate, snowy countryside. In the course of the cycle he experiences loss and an aching loneliness interrupted by fleeting glimpses of hope, but ultimately the landscape through which he is moving is colored by alienation and despair. MÃ¼ller died at thirty-two years old in 1827, the very year in which Winterreise was composed - and Schubert himself died the following year, still making revisions to the last of the songs while on his deathbed. When Schubert invited his closest friends to a gathering in order to listen to the cycle he called the songs 'gruesome', and according to one witness the audience was shocked by their sombre mood. In this recording, Mattei brings all his interpretive skills to bear. He is supported by the piano of Lars David Nilsson, which reinforces the different moods and characters of the twenty-four songs and often assumes the role of a narrator, alongside the singer.

Tracklist:

Winterreise, Op. 89, D. 911: No. 1, Gute Nacht
Winterreise, Op. 89, D. 911: No. 2, Die Wetterfahne
Winterreise, Op. 89, D. 911: No. 3, Gefror'ne Tränen
Winterreise, Op. 89, D. 911: No. 4, Erstarrung
Winterreise, Op. 89, D. 911: No. 5, Der Lindenbaum
Winterreise, Op. 89, D. 911: No. 6, Wasserflut
Winterreise, Op. 89, D. 911: No. 7, Auf Dem Flusse
Winterreise, Op. 89, D. 911: No. 8, Rückblick
Winterreise, Op. 89, D. 911: No. 9, Irrlicht
Winterreise, Op. 89, D. 911: No. 10, Rast
Winterreise, Op. 89, D. 911: No. 11, Frühlingstraum
Winterreise, Op. 89, D. 911: No. 12, Einsamkeit
Winterreise, Op. 89, D. 911: No. 13, Die Post
Winterreise, Op. 89, D. 911: No. 14, Der Greise Kopf
Winterreise, Op. 89, D. 911: No. 15, Die Krähe
Winterreise, Op. 89, D. 911: No. 16, Letzte Hoffnung
Winterreise, Op. 89, D. 911: No. 17, Im Dorfe
Winterreise, Op. 89, D. 911: No. 18, Der Stürmische Morgen
Winterreise, Op. 89, D. 911: No. 19, Täuschung
Winterreise, Op. 89, D. 911: No. 20, Der Wegweiser
Winterreise, Op. 89, D. 911: No. 21, Das Wirtshaus
Winterreise, Op. 89, D. 911: No. 22, Mut
Winterreise, Op. 89, D. 911: No. 23, Die Nebensonnen
Winterreise, Op. 89, D. 911: No. 24, Der Leiermann

UPC: 7318599924441
Label: Bis
Release Date: 9.6.19
Format: CD

Schubert / Mattei / Nilsson - Winterreise (CD)