Ever tried that children’s game of trying to pat your head while rubbing your stomach? Or drawing a circle with one hand and simultaneously a triangle with the other? The key is coordination, of course, and plenty of that is required if you are playing the piano and singing at the same time.
Born in the UK, raised in Canada and based in Germany, pianist-soprano Rachel Fenlon is renowned for her self-accompanied concerts. On May 12, she made her Hong Kong debut with a performance of Franz Schubert’s Winterreise.
We are not talking about casual, barroom-style singing and playing here, but possibly the longest, most challengingly intense song cycle ever penned. The shadow of death hangs over much of Schubert’s late music, and Winterreise – a cycle of 24 songs – features around 80 minutes of almost unremitting gloom.
Here, through the poems of Wilhelm Muller, the composer explores the psychological descent of a lonely old traveller through a barren, wintry landscape.
Unlike Die Schone Mullerin (The Beautiful Miller’s Daughter), Schubert’s earlier song cycle that features a semblance of plot and also some hope, Winterreise is more a series of scenes and emotional states, ranging from heartbreak and isolation at the sunnier end of the scale, to utter despair by the end – a fairly typical day at the office for a German Romantic poet.
