It has become a mantra, repeated over and over: Franz Schubert’s 24-song cycle, Winterreise, is “one of the miracles of Western music,” an “undisputed masterpiece” that represents the culmination of German romantic art song. Hence, the cycle commands performances — locally last year by Wolfgang Holzmair, next season by Gerald Finley — as each artist attempts to convey, through his own lens, the emotional and spiritual essence of Schubert’s bleak Winter’s Journey. But it is not until confronted with a performance as heart-wrenchingly profound as baritone Matthias Goerne and pianist Christoph Eschenbach’s on Sunday evening in Davies Symphony Hall that the full measure of Schubert’s monumental achievement can shake us to the core.
Goerne and Eschenbach’s protagonist was far more than a sad man trapped in isolation and hopelessness. Even before he sang a note, the baritone’s deliberately disheveled and seemingly distracted appearance signaled that something deeper than despair was going on.
Summoning forth his sweetest tone as he introduced himself in “Gute Nacht” (Good night) with, in translation, “I arrived as a stranger, as a stranger I left,” he soon darkened his tone, then let it grow more ominous as dogs howled and he wished his love a good night. By the time he reached the second song, his wide-eyed expression and lunging, lurching body language began to paint out of his “delusion” a man, at least obsessed to the point of madness if not clinically bipolar.
As Goerne sang, with pathetic tenderness, “Softly, softly close the door,” the first signs of ambiguity emerged. Was he bidding adieu to all hopes of relationship with a specific woman, or was he in fact closing the door on a part of himself? Indications emerged in the successive songs, as he seemed to awaken from a trance and notice for the first time that he had wept “Gefrorene Tränen” (Frozen tears). Eschenbach at the keyboard, as well, made the signs clear by pulling back beautifully at the end of that third song, then drifting off as the image of the beloved flowed away at the end of “Erstarrung” (Numbness).
Silences counted for volumes in this Winterreise. Time and again, the duo didn’t simply pause momentarily. Instead, they stopped completely, as if Goerne was totally lost — not just in feeling, but also to himself. At these moments, the abyss opened before him. At times the writing allowed him to pull back from the brink; at other times, he proceeded as if consumed. When he sang, after a huge pause at the end of the seventh song, “Auf dem Flusse” (At the stream), “My heart, do you recognize yourself in this stream? Beneath the stream’s crust, does a torrent also rage?,” his voice flowed with the emotion of a man struggling desperately to get in touch with whatever small part of himself he could still access.
Goerne’s identification with inner alienation was so complete that, at one point, I could not help but pray that, when the cycle was finally over, he could turn to someone to help bring him back from the depths. When he grasped the side of piano at the end of “Rückblick” (Looking back), it felt as if it was but one more attempt to retain hold of whatever semblance of reality he could still connect with, however fleetingly.
Eschenbach’s pianism had but one goal: … to use music to express a hopeless progression of madness.
The singer’s oneness with a man on the brink of losing himself completely carried through Eschenbach’s every note, as well. Never was his playing about himself, or his own expressive abilities. Instead, his pianism had but one goal: to travel down the same frozen road, observe the same disturbed signposts in the snow, and use music to express a hopeless progression of madness whose depths could not be expressed through words or even individual songs.
The Dare
“But who painted the flowers at the window?” asks the protagonist as his tempo slowed in the often-excerpted “Frühlingstraum” (Dream of spring). As Goerne continued with “You laugh at the dreamer who saw flowers in winter?,” what in some throats has come across as a sweet song of longing became, instead, a terrible testimony to hopelessness. Goerne virtually moaned as he sang, “I shut my eyes once more; my heart keeps beating warmly.” It was as painful to experience as the cry, at the end of “Mut” (Courage), “If there is no God on earth, we are gods ourselves!”
Their performance gave ultimate testimony of the power of art to transcend the limitations of time and space, and to express the truth of life.
While the supreme beauty and sincerity of Goerne’s singing has never been questioned, he has often been criticized for tempos slow, slower, and slowest. Here, true to form, slower tempos emerged as the cycle proceeded. As he began the 21st song, “Das Wirtshaus” (The inn), leaning against the piano as if he could not have held himself up otherwise, his tempo was so slow that even I wondered why.
But then it became clear. Goerne, whose every movement seemed real rather than put on, was in effect daring his listeners to join him in his final step into the abyss.
I can well understand those who refused to go along, and crossed their arms over their chests. But, judging from the audience’s increasingly tumultuous ovation at cycle’s end, when people rose to their feet, not out of a sense of obligation, but to express genuine gratitude, most of those present seemed willing to follow him to the point of no return.
That point came in the transition from the G major of the penultimate song, “Die Nebensonnen” (The sun mocks), to the G minor of the final song, “Der Leiermann” (The organ grinder). Never, to my ears, has this simple key-transition sounded so jarring. When Goerne accompanied the stumbling organ grinder through the snow, the metaphor of total abandonment to the frozen wasteland of separation was complete.
How Eschenbach enabled the final note to sound with such soft finality was yet another artistic miracle among many. His and Goerne’s performance gave ultimate testimony of the power of art to transcend the limitations of time and space, and to express the truth of life divorced from the reality of hope, friendship, and the God both within and without.