Happy Sunday! To wrap up the weekend’s performances from our new digital program, An Aria A Day, Gregory Massingham performs the last song from Schubert’s much loved song cycle ‘Winterreise’ (‘Winter Journey’), published just prior to the composer’s death in 1827.

Following on the theme from his earlier, more hopeful song cycle Die schöne Müllerin written to text by the same poet, Schubert’s haunting setting of words by Wilhelm Müller, ‘Winterreise’ (Winter’s Journey) was published just before the composer’s death in 1827.

The sparse but perfectly crafted writing for both voice and piano provides a bleak and intense wintry harmonic landscape. Within its colours Schubert manages to represent the unrequited lover’s shifting emotions of bittersweet memories, grief, isolation, despair and, ultimately, resignation to what the future may bring as he describes the old beggar in the final song.