Schubert 'first' for Bournemouth Chamber Music Society
REVIEW - Courtesy, Daily Echo
Bournemouth Chamber Music Society, Talbot Heath School
MOST classical devotees know Schubert’s song cycle, Winterreise; yet how many have been fortunate enough to hear it live?
This 180-year-old work has just received its premiere in Bournemouth. True, as tenor James Gilchrist said, it’s not a bundle of laughs, and reading through Wilhelm Muller’s 24 poems, however expressive of the deserted lover’s state of mind, they are downright depressing.
Here the consummate artistry of Gilchrist and Anna Tilbrook wove a spellbinding course for this Winter Journey.
Opening with Gilchrist’s quietly dreamy Good Night to his sweetheart, now lost to another man, we heard dramatic anger at the mocking Weathervane, pleading in Frozen Tears and devastating emotional conviction searching for “her” footsteps in the snow.
There is no happy ending; the lover identifies with falling leaves, a single crow (premonition of death), storms, then follows a Signpost to the graveyard. He stands defiant in Courage.
Finally The Hurdy-Gurdy Man signifies hopelessness, leaving him icely reflective. And we, for a minute, sat as in the silence of falling snow. Bravo
Mike Marsh |
