Winterreise Wednesdays! (No. 6: Goerne/Eschenbach v. Prégardien/Staier)

[@murraylow4523]

I (re) bought the Goerne Hyperion recording after your Winterreise survey as I have the big Hyperion box but, as you say, it’s split on there. Plus for the Johnson notes - I mean the Yale books were always a bit more than a stretch financially but now not available anyhow. The Pregardien/ Staier has been my go to for a time, partly as I’m a tenor. But when I hear the fortepiano there, I’m not really thinking “this is the true sound of Biedermeier “, I’m enjoying how the lighter action of the instrument combined with the light ish tenor leavens what can turn into a deep dark doom fest. The timbres sound “frosty” somehow and even the scarier aspects of winter are bright as well as dark.

[@hubert8694]

Just to be part of the party: my all time No. 1 is Ernst Haefliger t / Jörg Ewald Dähler p (1980 recording, on Claves Records). My favorite baritone version is Christian Gerhaher b / Gerold Huber p (2001 recording on Arte Nova / RCA). For Schubert Lieder I generally prefer tenor.

[@craggyisland8770]

Winterreise Wednesday!…May it never end

[@jujukoba6924]

getting older I am getting more and more on the side of the tenors in this piece. The main thing of the winterreise is someone alone and isolated, in other words someone fragile. Goerne is more a bass than a baritone and dark voices have the problem to express this situation as we associate dark voices with power and the force to do whatever they want. In addition he often darkens his voice and do strange things with vowels. In German we say "er knödelt" from time to time. Listen in the first song the word "Fremd". There is no need to do so, but he does such strange things. Pregardien is brilliant and I am waiting that his son is also making a record of the Winterreise (There is already a recording of a life concert of him on youtube which is amazing).

[@michelangelomulieri5134]

They are my favourite voices for Schubert’s winterreise and cannot choose between them. I suggest to own both!

[@dvdjrv7976]

Since I have the chance, I'll ask: have you heard the Rudolf Schock Winterreise? I'll describe it briefly: he had a deep voice with a tenor range (though he did transpose some of the songs lower, most notably the last of each half); his voice was kind of operatic, with straightforward delivery and in keeping with Schubert's dynamics. The accompanist, Ivan Eröd, was OK, dare I say unremarkable; but Schock's voice itself makes this set my favorite, next to Haefliger/Kobayashi. So I might as well give it a shoutout here.