Schubert: Winterreise

A solitary traveller, a frozen landscape, a stricken heart: Schubert’s song cycle Winterreise (Winter Journey) takes the clichés of Romanticism and turns them into a journey into the depths of the human soul. For the distinguished British tenor Ian Bostridge, it’s “the ultimate work that I perform. It’s a work that ranks with the greatest”, and together with his friend and regular collaborator, the Norwegian piano virtuoso Leif Ove Andsnes, he treats it less as a recital than as a drama. A lifetime’s engagement with Schubert—plus Bostridge’s fearless determination to stretch both his voice and his insights to the very limit—make this one of the supreme modern journeys into Schubert’s wintry world: by turns terrifying, tender and haunting beyond words.