‘Matthias Goerne & Leif Ove Andsnes’

Subsequent to Die schöne Müllerin, Matthias Goerne and Leif Ove Andsnes continue their Schubert pilgrimage with Winterreise, the Viennese composer’s second great song cycle. The first song sets the tragic mood with the minor key dominating. Suffering from a broken heart owing to an unrequited love, a traveller walks in the midst of a cold winter landscape and surrenders to death: “I must take the path from which no traveller has every returned...” Composed in 1827, this cycle is one of Schubert’s last and most poignant. He was living alone in Vienna at the time, weakened by the illness that he would succumb to a year later.