Schubert: Song "Gretchen am Spinnrade" (Benjamin Zander - Interpretation Class)

For more classes like this one, please visit the Benjamin Zander Center - www.benjaminzander.org/
Bethany Worrell, soprano & Dina Vainshtein, piano
Interpretations of Music: Lessons for Life
with Benjamin Zander
Dave Jamrog Audio/Video

[@sunflowerfields4409]

YES!!!! At about 20:06-20:17, I cried. This video is excellent. I'm so glad I came across it while I'm studying this piece for a recital.

[@robertcentobene4375]

Excellent peripheral vision (accompanist) and excellent, excellent mentoring. I am 77 years old, but have been writing music and playing the piano since 5 years old. When I was in high school I had people tell me after I starred as Naki-Poo in the Mikado, that I should go into voice - but I stuck with piano. Now I can see I have truly missed it! You have it in a great way Mr. Benjamin, and your coaching is incredible! That girl you coached here is truly a great talent in the making. While Elizabeth Swatrzcof (pardon the spelling) is incredible, what you did with this girl is incredible. Her voice blossomed in a way so beautiful during your coaching that cannot be put into words! It was the best version of Gretchen Am Spinnrade I have ever heard!

[@TheChannelXY]

This is the best version of this song I have ever heard!

[@raoultak]

My God.....how much can we do with music.....how much can we tell. It's beautiful.

[@marichka2681]

Brilliant teaching! It is hard to imagine, to understand nowadays what it meant to have an affair not being married in Middle Ages, and in Germany. And having a child was the last thing a girl would have wanted, it was a curse and exclusion from society. The spinning movement as it comes from Goethe's Gretchen also implicates that she is trapped, she can't take off her mind, she goes on and on, getting psychic. Her love will bring her madness and killing her child. and spinning is foretelling the tragedy, conveying it is not going to end up well. It is not a light-hearted love song. Plus, another perspective comes if we remember who else was spinning when she got to know she was going to have a child and what a blessing it was for her. But poor Gretchen was in a completely different situation, like a tragic parody.

[@bt9124]

Thank you for these helpful observations which Schubert must have had in mind? Agree, she is a great communicator.

[@dennisrice2763]

What a voice! Far above average. Full, round, solid tone. Great future, I hope. And as you sang it the second time, I began to hear the desperation that Gretchen is feeling. I've only heard that one time before from a Polish soprano; I apologize, I do not have her name at the moment. But you've got 'IT'! (April 10, 2022).

[@tiamia7139]

Gorgeous piece sung beautifully.

[@peter-el7ym]

How deeply encouraging is an event such as this for someone facing his demise.

[@rche9131]

Superbe ! Extraordinaire !

[@dannyvazquez4725]

What a wonderful class!!

[@Sabrinamusicchannel]

Excellent singing and teaching ❤👍

[@wordsworks7084]

Grea t, grea! ! Wahr a great artist is Mr. Zander! Look at his face at 20,19!!!

[@fernandezramon21]

Beautiful. There must be a God.

[@bt9124]

Schubert's pianos would have had no or a crap sustaining pedal; you could hear the treadle? Great teaching!

[@markferwerda7968]

Good diction!

[@johnjacopec6668]

dream woman.

[@my-self2278]

The C makes The B sad. I dont remember what he actually said.

[@user-ys4og2vv8k]

I disagree with Benjamin Zander’s explanation. I think the spinning wheel here is a metaphor for the return of a desire that spins and spins and never stops, even though the girl would want it to stop. And Schubert illustrates this beautifully with music, when the rhythm almost stops, and then starts again with all its might..

[@bt9124]

The spinning wheel is ambiguous; both mundane and passionate.

[@sylviaroyce8736]

Yes, the non-musical interpretation of this song that makes the most sense to me is that he has just abandoned her and she is pregnant, which is just about as bad as it got at that place and time. Yet she still loves him. I imagine that she is turning this situation over in her mind obsessively, while spinning, which she needed to do for the money. (Spinning and all the rest that one had to do to make clothing before the industrial age took almost all of a woman’s time if she was in a family, and was one of the pitifully few things she could do for money if she wasn’t.

[@kilianklaiber6367]

@@sylviaroyce8736 The spinning wheel just follows here emotions, while she is singing. Imaging do an monotonous work while you are thinking about something completely different. It is a mirror of her despair and her desires as she is singing along. Spinning is also proverbial in German for losing your mind.

[@RochestersGotTalentbyPaulRefic]

i could be wrong ,but is there classical music that is origional?

[@melissawarner9384]

A superb performance !

[@juliussw9153]

origional? if you mean original, classical music has paved the way for almost all the musical theory within modetn western music.

[@qwert2020]

What do you mean?

[@TobiaTesan]

No, it’s all copied from Bach. Only partly kidding.

[@23gregorius]

For any foreigner the German language is something almost impossible. Here the word Handedruck is pronounced not correctly. I know only one singer who mastered this difficult German language like German: Baritone Hamsted .

[@chrissinger24]

Eeeshhh did she learn German in Köln?

[@JULIESIMONSOPRANO]

i did notice the diction seemed a little different- is the accent different there?

[@bodiloto]

questa ragazza non conosce la base del canto . il maetsro non dice niente sulla impostazione della voce e la vocalità perché non è uno della professione . vergogna !

[@PianoOlgaPA]

Dimitri Steinberg

[@luxwitch4200]

Dire che la cantante non conosce proprio le basi mi pare un'esagerazione, però concordo che ci sia qualche imperfezione qua e là. Il maestro, suppongo sia un direttore d'orchestra o uno strumentista, sicuramente non un cantante. Cosa a mio parere imperdonabile, devi prendere qualcuno che conosca lo strumento per poterlo migliorare, qualcuno che ti sappia dare dei riferimenti tecnici per ottenere il risultato voluto, non si rende poi conto dei limiti della voce e dei limiti della cantante in particolare, poco prima di prenderla da dietro al collo, mentre lui faceva il matto davanti ai suoi occhi, distraendola tra l'altro, la poveretta ha mollato il fiato per un attimo. È vero che se non ci si spinge piú in là non si migliora, ma non puoi far stirare le corde alla gente, ballargli davanti o prenderle il collo tanto da spostarle la testa in un passaggio cosí delicato.

[@senna6773]

@@luxwitch4200 Lei si sta perfezionando nell'aspetto musicale, non tecnico-vocale. Questo è un masterclass di interpretazione. Bodiloto è un vecchio amaro, cantante frustrato, un pezzo di merda che si dedica a fare critiche distruttive e da ignorante su tutti cantanti moderni.

[@paulricchi3707]

Sì, non è un insegnante di canto, sta dando una lezione di interpretazione, spesso necessaria quando la pedagogia vocale è incompleta. Credo che la vergogna ricada su di te, per la tua ostilità.

[@sunflowerfields4409]

I look forward to your performance. Sono certo che il tuo sarà perfetto.