Through Winter’s shadow: a journey through Schubert’s Winterreise at the Muziekgebouw

Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’entrate!
(Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.)
(Dante Alighieri, Divine Comedy, Inferno, Canto III)

It may seem almost reckless to invoke the inscription above the gate of Hell to introduce Schubert’s Winterreise. Yet just as Dante traverses the three realms of the afterlife, beginning in the Inferno before ascending to Paradise, so too does Schubert’s masterpiece begin in the depths of anguish, only to find its way toward the light of Müller’s poetry. And the audience at the Muziekgebouw knows this instinctively: one submits to 80 uninterrupted minutes of music because only by passing through sorrow can one arrive at joy. It was into this journey, both harrowing and transcendent, that the audience was led by two luminous guides: Matthias Goerne and David Fray.

Fray, called in to replace an indisposed Maria João Pires, to whom we all wish a full and swift recovery, brought clarity, incisive focus and a refined, attentive touch to the subtleties of the Winterreise. From the very first note, the hall became a landscape of frost and shadow. The wanderer of Schubert’s cycle walked not alone, but accompanied by interpreters whose mastery transformed every nuance of despair, longing and introspection into a shared odyssey. As the wanderer stepped through icy paths and desolate streets, the mind wandered with him, tracing echoes of Dante’s descent into the Inferno, the lonely odysseys of Joyce’s Ulysses, and the stark realism of Müller’s poetry. Each Lied was a waypoint in a journey that was simultaneously outward and inward, where the frozen landscapes of winter mirrored the winter of the soul, and solitude was both trial and revelation.

Matthias Goerne’s baritone captivated with a magnetic immediacy, drawing the listener into the wanderer’s interior world. His voice carried every tremor of emotion with clarity and depth, turning anguish into understanding. At moments, however, his powerful delivery seemed to yearn for a more intimate pianistic dialogue, subtle passages where the piano might have cradled the voice, lending it a gentle complicity that could illuminate its most delicate nuances.

The French pianist met this challenge with crystalline precision and thoughtful restraint. His touch framed Goerne’s baritone with architectural clarity, allowing both harmonic and melodic contours to breathe. In Der Leiermann, Goerne’s voice languidly closed the journey, like a ship finally returning to calm waters after a storm, while Fray’s piano sketched the final, austere contours with quiet dignity.

Here, history, literature and music converge: the Romantic preoccupation with emotion and nature, the formal elegance of the Lied, the philosophical and existential questioning that Müller’s text evokes. And yet, this was not a descent into despair; it was an exploration of the human condition, a meditation on resilience and insight. The audience moved with the wanderer, guided by two artists whose interpretive genius illuminated the shadows of the heart, transforming the recital into a voyage as intimate as it was universal. Having guides like Goerne and Fray made even Dante’s Infernal gate seem unthreatening, an intensely profound experience.