Winterreise (Winter Journey) is a song cycle for voice and piano by Franz Schubert (published 1828), a setting of 24 poems by German poet Wilhelm Müller. The cycle consists of a monodrama from the point of view of the wandering protagonist. After his beloved falls for another, the grief-stricken young man steals away from town at night and follows the river and steep ways to a charcoal burner's hut, where he rests before moving on. He comes across a village, passes a crossroads, and arrives at a cemetery. Here being denied even the death, he defiantly renounces faith, then reaches a point of resignation, embodied in the final song by a derelict street musician, the only instance in the cycle in which another character is present.

The text consists of poems by Wilhelm Müller. Müller, a poet, soldier and Imperial Librarian at Dessau in Prussia (present-day east-central Germany), died in 1827 aged 32. Schubert himself died in 1828 at the age of 31, just after proof-reading the last of the cycle's songs and before their first full publication. In Winterreise Schubert raises the importance of the pianist to a role equal to that of the singer. The piano supplies rich effects in the nature imagery of the poems, the voices of the elements, the creatures and active objects, the rushing storm, the crying wind, the water under the ice, birds singing, ravens croaking, dogs baying, the rusty weathervane grating, the post horn calling, and the drone and repeated melody of the barrel organ.

Schubert's Winterreise is in effect one single dramatic monologue, lasting over an hour in performance. It is a work which is usually presented in its entirety. The intensity and the emotional inflections of the poetry are carefully built up to express the sorrows of the lover and are developed to an almost pathological degree from the first to the last note. Over the course of the cycle, grief over lost love progressively gives way to more general existential despair and resignation – the beloved is last directly mentioned only halfway into the work – and the literal winter's journey is arguably at least in part allegorical for this psychological and spiritual one. Wintry imagery of cold, darkness, and barrenness consistently serve to mirror the feelings of the isolated wanderer. The resources of intellect and interpretative power required to deliver them, in the chamber or concert hall, challenge the greatest singers.

(adapted from Wikipedia)

Baritone Suchan Kim has been performing major opera roles with Opera in Williamsburg since 2014, and has performed in several of our art song concerts, including the first where he performed Schuman's Dichterliebe and Mahler's Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen. Pianist Peiwen Chen is based in New York City, this will be her first performance with Opera in Williamsburg