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| Tenor Peter Wedd (© Emelle Kroon) |
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| Maestro Ido Shpitalnik (© Michael Fabia) |
Winterreise Reimagined (Schubert/Zender) was presented on September 1st 2026, the opening day of the 28th Felicja Blumental Music Festival. The performance took place in the Recanati Auditorium of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. The Jerusalem Street Orchestra, under its founder/director Ido Shpitalnik, was joined by the Tremolo Ensemble. Guest soloist was British tenor Peter Wedd.
In February 1827 Schubert invited a group of friends to listen to his latest collection of songs set to verses of Saxon poet Wilhelm Müller. Schubert sang the entire Winterreise (Winter's Journey) through in a voice brimming with emotion, referring to the collection as “truly terrible, songs which have affected me more than any others”. Müller, an equally short-lived contemporary of Schubert, had died just as Schubert was beginning work on Winterreise. The two probably never met. Franz Schubert's 24-song cycle, originally intended for tenor and piano, has since undergone several new settings - for trio with oboe and bassoon (in which the oboe takes the melodic line), for baritone and string quartet, a setting for two guitars, arrangements for soloist and choir, for singer and mixed ensemble, and more. Over recent years, I myself have heard it performed by three female singers and piano (Tel Aviv Opera) and, more recently, Andrew Middleton's setting for baritone (Oded Reich) and wind quintet.
Enter German composer Hans Zender. Born in
1936 Zender, a controversial chief of the Hamburg State Opera in the 1980s, was
a longstanding figure in the German musical avant garde. Written in 1993, his
“composed interpretation”, Winterreise Reimagined, preserves the cycle’s
structure, textual order and melodic material, but it refracts, expands, de- and
re-constructs the songs through the sound world of his own times, of the fantasy of his own mind. Surely what must be the boldest of such projects, it has achieved enormous success
worldwide. Describing his Winterreise setting as a "secular
Passion". Zender’s orchestral writing is richly divergent from Schubert’s
original piano line. His creation of the
instrumental score, with its constantly shifting textures, takes its cue from
19th- and 20th-century Expressionism; it refers to the music of Mahler and
the Second Viennese School, while the presence of accordion, guitar and
saxophone suggest the influence of Weimar Republic cabaret music. As the listener is waiting and observing the instruments on stage (doubled woodwinds, horn, trumpet, trombone,
strings, accordion, harp, timpani and several percussion
instruments), it becomes apparent that something is now happening: initially almost
inaudible, the shuffle of the wanderer’s feet is suggested by sand pipe and col legno strings, prior to the distinctive descending melody in the
woodwind section, taking us into "Gute Nacht" (Good Night). From the
very outset, Peter Wedd sets in motion his candid, unhampered, theatrical
delivery, at times engaging the use of a microphone, occasionally abandoning
the sung note for spoken utterance, heightening the extra layer of emotional
extremity and existential bleakness Zender has incorporated into the original Schubert work. The unique textures and timbral contrasts of Zender's orchestration
create an almost visual canvas for each song: the eerie, icy drops of
"Gefrorne Tränen" (Frozen Tears) evoked by the almost-pointillistic
scoring of the ensemble, the barbed whirlwind in "Die Wetterfahne" (The Weather
Vane), with the strings evoking a storm, in which the singer’s lines expand as
if billowed by the wind, while, in the urgent ‘Erstarrung’ (Frozen Stiff), there are snarls
from muted brass. And, in the fantastical "Die Krähe" (The Crow),
punctuated by caws from the oboe, we follow the bird soaring high into the sky
as solo woodwind and brass trace the vocal melody. Zender's use of harp and
guitar provide beautiful moments of tenderness and delicacy, his use of accordion,
nostalgia. The pipe organ effect in Song No.21 "Das Wirtshaus"
(The Inn), is warm, comforting and familiar in its church hymn association. As the cycle
progresses, the songs become more fragmented and disconnected by means of
augmentation and diminution, or by harmonic and rhythmic reconfigurations, as
the vocal line slips in and out in disturbing, distracted utterances. There
were wind players who wandered about the hall and into the wings with their
instruments, a physical expression of the wandering concept. As to Zender's
setting of "Der Leiermann" (The Hurdy-Gurdy Player), this is a true
tour-de-force, his orchestration moving away from Schubert’s original to create
a menacing, otherworldly soundscape, the hurdy-gurdy motif coming at one in
layers from all directions, the score's ghostly harmonics transforming the
winter landscape into something unstable and hallucinatory, the music testifying to
the wanderer’s disconnection from reality. Bleak and terrifying, the music
fades away without resolution.
Known for his Heldentenor roles, Peter
Wedd's well projected, dark-coloured voice, his strong vocal endurance and
theatrical presence, made for a gripping performance of the work. His insight
into Hans Zender’s radical reimagining of Schubert’s Winterreise, its
gestures and meaning, kept audience members at the edge of their seats.
And kudos to Maestro Shpitalnik, who drew all the threads together in an eloquent, sparkling and intense performance, creating Schubert and Zender's vivid images and soundscapes with articulacy. And the players of the Jerusalem Street Orchestra and the Tremolo Ensemble certainly did not disappoint!
