Schubert\u2019s cycle comprises 24 songs, most of them in minor keys, and derives from the natural world endless metaphors for heartache. The winter\u2019s journey of the title begins with a breakup, and the narrator spends the rest of the time ruminating upon the fallout. The narrator\u2019s beloved, he says, proved to be as fickle as a weather vane batted by the wind. His tears freeze and scald, and his numbness hides a roiling grief, like a river seething below a surface of ice.<\/p>\n

The piano part has the capacity to amplify or comment on the narrator\u2019s mental state, and Uchida used it to console him like a wise, empathetic friend. She eased into key changes with subtle decelerations. The octaves of \u201cDer Lindenbaum\u201d (\u201cThe Linden Tree\u201d) were transparent, rather than towering, and the rustling of branches had a dusky quality as though seen through the mollifying haze of a dream. In \u201cWasserflut\u201d (\u201cFlood\u201d), she handled chromatic semitones with utmost delicacy to minimize the impact of their dissonant pangs. Her performance came to a peak in \u201cDas Wirtshaus\u201d (\u201cThe Inn\u201d), where a slow, firm sequence of full-fingered chords provided ineffable comfort.<\/p>\n

The narrator\u2019s beloved dominates the first half, but in a curious twist, she largely vanishes in the second, as his despair consumes him and convinces him that he\u2019s destined for life as a social pariah.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n

Uchida achieved arresting coherence across the entire cycle, but Padmore dug more specifically into that point of divergence. His acidulous tone, an awkward fit for the cycle\u2019s early expressions of young heartbreak, illuminated the existential anguish of a soul who has decided he\u2019s better off lost. Rather than struggle with that anguish, Padmore\u2019s narrator embraced it with a sense of finality beyond his years.<\/p>\n

Padmore muscled his way through the cycle\u2019s first 12 songs, summoning a pointed resonance but no real sense of line in Schubert\u2019s gracious melodies. The milky softness of his tone in early recordings has curdled, and his technique, which used to cultivate mellifluousness with frequent use of a precise and floaty mixed voice, now produces a hard and unwieldy sound that veers out of tune.<\/p>\n

His interpretation pivoted on the third song of the second half, \u201cDie Kr\u00e4he\u201d (\u201cThe Crow\u201d), where his narrator\u2019s self-pity and mordant resentments transmogrified into macabre fascinations with death. As he gazed at the sky with a gruesome smile and welcomed the crows to pick at his bones, his grip on reality loosened. He nurtured a nascent misanthropy in \u201cIm Dorfe\u201d (\u201cIn the Village\u201d) and \u201cDer st\u00fcrmische Morgen\u201d (\u201cThe Stormy Morning\u201d). His voice became less effortful as he no longer fought to muster volume; he settled into the modest size and natural point of his instrument with disturbing calm and carved fine slits in the air as though with an assassin\u2019s blade.<\/p>\n

In a way, Padmore\u2019s diminished capabilities underlined the profundity of the narrator\u2019s wizened state. In the last song, the narrator encounters a hurdy-gurdy player, a forgotten old man on the outskirts of town. The ghostly vision filled Padmore\u2019s voice with awe as he contemplated joining the man in self-imposed exile.<\/p>\n

Carnegie\u2019s Perspectives series is an opportunity for artists to share their distinctive points of view on repertoire, and Uchida and Padmore did just that, taking the narrator to his bleakest moment in order to find a bit of light.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was a performance of hard-won wisdom. When the eminent pianist Mitsuko Uchida and the tenor Mark Padmore teamed up for Schubert\u2019s \u201cWinterreise\u201d on Friday at Zankel Hall, they brought the maturity of hindsight to a genre-defining work of young, unrequited love. The concert was part of Uchida\u2019s Perspectives series with Carnegie Hall. Schubert\u2019s cycle<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":46426,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46425"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46425\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}