The three parts to “The Winterreise Experience,” a joint offering by Emmanuel Music and the Goethe Institute between March 15^th and 22^nd included: a normal complete performance of Schubert’s 1827 masterpiece, D 911, by David Tinervia, baritone, and pianist Ian Watson, followed on March 19^th by a symposium, and finally a complex orchestrated theater piece. I didn’t hear the first two events but I did report to the Distler Auditorium at Tufts, my home institution, for the conclusion, “Schubert’s Winterreise: A Composed Interpretation,” by the contemporary German composer Hans Zender, who died in 2019. Emmanuel Music’s supplemented orchestra, directed by Ryan Turner, accompanied tenor Nicholas Phan before an almost-full hall.

I still have difficulty describing the “composed interpretation.” Neither a pastoral or a pastiche, it was peripeteia—musical equivalent of a Robert Rauschenberg construction, partly sung, partly orchestrated, choreographed, and ceremonialized, all blended together with a generous helping of Dada and pop art (I wasn’t surprised to learn from Wikipedia that Zender has also set texts by Hugo Ball). All of this unfolded with Schubert’s 24 songs sung in order and variously accompanied by elegant orchestration* and violent distortion, with smearing harmony in overlay, fragmentary transposition, and instrumental and textural acrobatics.

Such ideas are not unprecedented, of course. Composers have always been willing to lay alien hands on the works of their forebears with a view to expropriating them for their own. We are all familiar with Bach’s recomposition for organ of Vivaldi’s violin concerti which substantially and sometimes grotesquely transform the original; likewise Rachmaninoff’s and Busoni’s rewritten versions of Bach and Mozart; Strauss’s Dance Suite after Couperin; Stravinsky’s The Fairy’s Kiss delightfully augments Tchaikovsky to vast advantage. But Zender’s over-the-top transformation left this listener constantly at war with experience of the original songs, knowing that the audience’s ready familiarity with Schubert’s work instinctively fought off anything else obscuring it. And yet I sometimes could not help finding the total experience interesting, even affecting.

The orchestral sound grabbed my attention most of the time; occasionally the harmonic idiom surprised me; it smacked of 1920s German impressionism (I might well be wrong, but I thought particularly of Strauss’s Frau ohne Schatten and Schreker’s Die Gezeichneten and Irrelohe, and some earlier Hindemith, but this important segment of German music history is little known to American audiences already befuddled by the Second Viennese School). The orchestra (doubled woodwinds, horn, trumpet, trombone, strings 1-1-2-1-1, accordion, harp, timpani, three kitchens’ worth of percussion) was totally occupied and absorbed. Several wind players journeyed purposefully about the hall and into the wings with their instruments, and also with three melodicas, emblematic of the winter wind, knowing that it was cold and wet outside.

“Gute Nacht” began with a steady drumbeat (snare drum) that expanded to col legno strings and guitar, all on a D minor that was effective, very like the original pacing on the piano, with major-mode shift near the end. In fact col legno strings appeared regularly (“Letzte Hoffnung”, “Wegweiser”, and “Mut”; with guitar in “Gefrorne Tränen”; side by side with glisses in “Wasserflut”; with xylophone in “Rückblick”). Quasi guitara strumming appeared in “Auf dem Flusse”; Bartók snaps in “Die Post” (at this point the singer took up a microphone for amplification); harmonics with harp in “Täuschung”; pizzicato glisses senza misura in “Rast”. There was an abundance of low-brass sound, even reaching down to pedal tones, well supported by contrabassoon and double bass, for an effectively Ring-Wagnerian support. At the other end of the registral spectrum, there were some cringe-inducing high notes for the horn, even above the treble clef. In the penultimate song, “Die Nebensonnen,” one had to remember that parhelia (sundogs) are a wintertime phenomenon; these were nicely and movingly realized by three canonic entrances of Schubert’s harmony, first in strings, next in harp, and finally in organ-like winds weighted to the brass.

Nicholas Phan sounded strong and projected well, without excess, and always with warmth. A Lieder specialist, he sometimes took a conversational Sprechstimme turn and at other times let loose his full voice. Ryan Turner led the group with total command, maintaining balances to perfection. Nobody had difficulty mistaking the wind, a regular motif in Wilhelm Müller’s text, in Zender’s regular application of chromatic scales, piercing piccolos, and glissandi. A special bow was offered to the four percussionists, who were assisted by a family of aeoliphones — three wind machines, alto, tenor, and contrabass.

There are a probably hundreds of good recordings of Winterreise, including, unpredictably, Jon Vickers’s traversal. Of the many Schubert song recordings with orchestra, our publisher swears by this set of 23 with Quasthoff and von Otter I recommend Ian Bostridge’s elegant little book (with disc).

Mark DeVoto, musicologist and composer, is an expert on the music of Alban Berg, Debussy, and other early 20th-century composers. A graduate of Harvard College (1961) and Princeton (Ph.D., 1967), he has published on many music subjects, and edited the revised fourth (1978) and fifth (1987) editions of Harmony by his teacher Walter Piston.

* AI lists some of the most frequently performed orchestral arrangements of Schubert’s Lieder: 
Erlkönig , D. 328: Orchestrated by Hector Berlioz, Max Reger, and Franz Liszt.
Gretchen am Spinnrade D. 118: Orchestrated by Max Reger.
Die Forelle D. 550: Orchestrated by Benjamin Britten.
Ave Maria (Ellens Gesang III), D. 839: Various orchestral arrangements
An die Musik (D. 547: Orchestrated by Max Reger.
Du bist die Ruh’ D. 776: Orchestrated by Anton Webern and Leopold Stokowski.
Im Abendrot D. 799: Orchestrated by Max Reger.
Nacht und Träume D. 827: Orchestrated by Max Reger.
Ständchen D. 957: Orchestrated by Jacques Offenbach as “La Sérénade de Schubert”.
Prometheus, D. 674: Orchestrated by Max Reger. 

Many notable composers took a special interest in “Schubert Revisited” projects:

Brahms Orchestrated Memnon (D. 541), An Schwager Kronos (D. 369), Geheimes (D. 719), and Ellens Gesang II (D. 838).
Reger orchestrated over a dozen Schubert songs, including Gruppe aus dem Tartarus (D. 583) and Heidenröslein (D. 257).
Webern made arrangements for Ihr Bild (D. 957) and Du bist die Ruh’.
Liszt made orchestral version s of Auf dem Wasser zu singen and Erlkönig, he also produced versions for voice and orchestra for songs like Die junge Nonne