I hope never to meet in person the Hurdy-Gurdy Man – Der Leiermann – encountered by the wanderer at the end of Winterreise, but I am always open to being told about him by those who have re-traced the steps of the poor benighted sojourner drawn by Wilhelm Müller and painted by Franz Schubert. The account of that meeting given by baritone Konstantin Krimmel and pianist Ammiel Bushakevitz was an outstanding narration: lyrically rich, tonally intense, and of a melancholic despair, where speech disintegrated into blanched and fragile fragments. In thus describing the evocative delivery of the final song, I am also reporting on the performance of the whole cycle, which was ecstatically received by a near-full house.
Both artists seem to subscribe to Theodor Adorno’s contention that a work of art is not actually alive and must be animated by human emotion. In a work of such morbid sensibility, that animation requires a fine balancing act of the voice and the body, and Krimmel was excellent in projecting the sense of dejection, depression and mental displeasure that is so dramatically inscribed in Müller’s words and Schubert’s music.
The lyric richness of the performance was most radiant in the songs whose melodic invention is heart-stopping, such as Der Lindenbaum, Frühlingstraum and Nebensonnen where Krimmel and Bushakevitz stayed well clear of the folksiness beloved of some artists. A sonorous tonal intensity characterised the songs where the rejected lover is self-pitying and where he momentarily overcomes his dejection, such as in Krähe and Das Wirthaus; in these instances singer and pianist conjured up a dolorous and shimmering resonance.
Highlighting those definitional aspects of the performance does not detract from its overall shaping and trajectory, which might be described as resting on the firm bases of poise and grandeur. At the opening a silent invocation to the gods to look favourably on the enterprise seemed to be met with unspoken approval, the response to which was the verses of Gute Nacht given as a floral tribute – the one received by the wanderer from the month of May. From there, the pacing was well-wrought, if a little on the slow side, with the overall timing of around 85 minutes. Perhaps the tempo scheme was in part derived from that of Der Lindenbaum, which allowed for the wanderer to linger over “so many a sweet dream” and from the studied apprehension of the strange apparition that is Der Leiermann.
At the conclusion of all performances of Winterreise is the question of whether the melancholic youth joins the organ-grinder – what a strange double-act that would be. In this reading the answer was not left hanging in the air; it dissipated in the near-breathless, whispered fragments magnificently enunciated by Krimmel, accompanied by the haunting tremor of Bushakevitz’s drone. Time stood still and the gods remained silent.
