Mark Padmore, Tenor Kristian Bezuidenhout, Fortepiano

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Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday Evenings, October 14, 15, and 17, 2015

The Schubert Cycles

Mark Padmore , Tenor Kristian Bezuidenhout , Fortepiano

Page 43 The Lovely Mill Maiden Wednesday Evening, October 14, at 7:30

Page 47 Swan Song Thursday Evening, October 15, at 7:30

Page 51 Winter Journey Saturday Evening, October 17, at 7:30

These performances are also part of the Great Performers Art of the Song series.

These performances are made possible in part by the Josie Robertson Fund for Lincoln Center.

Fortepiano by R.J. Regier, Freeport, Maine Please make certain all your electronic Alice Tully Hall, Starr Theater devices are switched off. Adrienne Arsht Stage

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BNY Mellon is Lead Supporter of Great Performers. Upcoming White Light Festival Events:

Support for Great Performers is provided by Tuesday and Wednesday Evenings, October 20–21, Rita E. and Gustave M. Hauser, The Florence Gould at 7:30 in James Memorial Chapel, Union Foundation, Audrey Love Charitable Foundation, Theological Seminary Great Performers Circle, Chairman’s Council, and Heretical Angels (U.S. premiere) Friends of Lincoln Center. Dialogos and Kantaduri Post-performance discussion on October 20 with Public support is provided by the New York State Katarina Livljani c and Ara Guzelimian Council on the Arts. ´ Sunday Afternoon, November 1, at 5:00 Endowment support for Symphonic Masters is in Alice Tully Hall provided by the Leon Levy Fund. Prayer Christine Brewer , Soprano Endowment support is also provided by UBS. Paul Jacobs , Organ Works by HANDEL, BACH, PUCCINI, GOUNOD, MetLife is the National Sponsor of Lincoln Center. and WIDOR; works for solo organ

Artist Catering provided by Zabar’s and zabars.com Saturday Evening, November 14, at 7:30 in Alice Tully Hall Last Soliloquy Fortepiano courtesy of The Juilliard School. Paul Lewis , Piano ALL-BEETHOVEN PROGRAM Mr. Padmore and Mr. Bezuidenhout will sign CDs in Sonata No. 30 in E major, Op. 109 the lobby immediately following each performance. Sonata No. 31 in A-flat major, Op. 110 Sonata No. 32 in C minor, Op. 111

For tickets, call (212) 721-6500 or visit WhiteLightFestival.org. Call the Lincoln Center Info Request Line at (212) 875-5766 to learn about pro - gram cancellations or to request a White Light Festival brochure.

Visit WhiteLightFestival.org for full festival listings.

Join the conversation: #LCWhiteLight

We would like to remind you that the sound of coughing and rustling paper might distract the performers and your fellow audience members. In consideration of the performing artists and members of the audience, those who must leave before the end of the performance are asked to do so between pieces. The taking of photographs and the use of recording equipment are not allowed in the building.

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Overview: The Schubert Cycles By Susan Youens

The song cycle—a group of songs held together by unifying texts, mood, poetic form, or musical procedures—became one of the foremost genres of the 19th century, with Beethoven the first composer to use the word Liederkreis (song cycle) to designate his only work of this kind: An die ferne Geliebte , Op. 98 (1816). In Beethoven’s unique con - ception, paired with Schubert’s Swan Song in the middle of this series of Schubert’s com - plete song cycles, six not-quite-independent songs are connected by “corridors” in the piano; the work is truly a cycle, a circular design in which we return at the end to a trans - formed version of the first song. It was inevitable that Schubert, who at age 14 announced his intent to “modernize the song composition of our day” and who idolized Beethoven, would be interested in this fledgling genre.

In the early 1820s Schubert came across the poetic anthology Seventy-Seven Poems from the Posthumous Papers of a Wandering Horn-Player (a tongue-in-cheek jab at Romanticism’s favorite themes) by his Prussian contemporary Wilhelm Müller. The col - lection begins with Die schöne Müllerin (The Lovely Mill Maiden), which tells the antique story of a miller maid wooed by a sensitive young mill-apprentice in love for the first time. When his rival wins the girl, the despairing lad drowns himself in the brook that has been his confidant from the start. From this archetypal tale of youth undone by its first brush with tragedy in love, Schubert in 1823 created some of his most heart-rending music.

After Schubert died in November 1828, the Viennese publisher Tobias Haslinger bought from the composer’s brother seven songs on poems by the Berlin writer Ludwig Rellstab and six songs on poems by Heinrich Heine, one of Germany’s greatest poets. To these two groups, Haslinger added the last song Schubert ever wrote (“Die Taubenpost”), and published all 14 as Schwanen-Gesang (Swan Song). The Rellstab poems, intended for Beethoven, become rich, extended songs in Schubert’s hands; the Heine songs are a glimpse into the future of 19th-century music; and “Die Taubenpost” (Pigeon-post) is the summation of Schubert’s songwriting art. Schwanengesang is not a cycle in the same sense as the Müller-Schubert masterpieces, but it is a swan song: a late and final outpour - ing before death and a guarantee of immortality for its creator.

In the wake of Die schöne Müllerin , it is only to be expected that Schubert would respond to new poetic works by Müller, and in 1827, he set another monodrama from Vol. 2 of Müller’s Horn-Player anthologies to music; he would correct the proofs for the second half of Winterreise on his deathbed. In this song cycle, a man has lost his beloved to a wealthier suitor and leaves her town on a journey into the wintry landscape of his soul. The only “plot” consists of his changing states of melancholy, despair, alienation, self- analysis, and longing for death. From the wanderer’s bleak insistence on self-understand - ing comes one of Western music’s most profound works. Although the songs of Schwanengesang were composed after it, Winterreise comes last in this series because, quite simply, nothing can follow it.

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Schubert and Samuel Beckett By Catherine Laws

Next month the White Light Festival presents three performances based on the writings of Samuel Beckett, a lover of music for whom Schubert was, it seems, most significant. The two men shared certain preoccupations: lone figures journeying through barren land - scapes, ambiguous encounters along the way, the persistent desire for the comfort of company in the face of ultimate isolation, and the hovering presence of death. In Beckett’s radio play All That Fall and the television play Nacht und Träume we hear Schubert’s actual music. The only sound in the beautiful, wordless Nacht und Träume is a wavering voice, humming and then singing a few bars of the Schubert lied from which the play takes its name. In All That Fall , a crackly recording of “Death and the Maiden” emanates from the “ruinous old house” of a “very old woman,” the music reinforcing the themes of the play: birth, youth, and fertility versus sterility, physical decline, and death. In Schubert’s music, then, Beckett finds a Romantic counterpart to his own, very different expression of the gap between the self and the world. We might even see this as the core of a broader musicality developed in Beckett’s work.

Beckett loved music. He enjoyed playing the piano, was married to a professional pianist, and regularly attended concerts. His listening tastes were broad, but his great love was for music of the late Classical and early Romantic periods. Beckett makes brief references to Schubert’s compositions in his early stories, and throughout his life retained a particular love of lieder, sometimes singing them to his own accompaniment. He listened repeatedly to Winterreise , especially, and references to winter journeys are found in Texts for Nothing 2 and 12, and especially at the end of What Where (1983), commissioned for the Autumn Festival in Graz, where Winterreise was partly composed: “It is Winter./Without journey.”

Beckett’s writing, for both the stage and the page, has often been perceived as pushing towards its own obliteration, ever closer to the silencing of the voice. His “characters”— though hardly that—with decaying, almost useless bodies, situated in barren environ - ments, steadily insist that there is nothing to say and no possibility of knowledge or understanding. But they never stop; the voices fizzle on with their increasingly broken, empty, repetitive, hopeless—and often very funny—attempts to tell stories. In the process, the language fragments and fissures even as it pours forth; whether truncated and percussive or accumulative and spieling, the closer we get to exhaustion and silence the more musical the impact of the language. This was important to Beckett: rehearsing Footfalls with Rose Hill, Beckett announced: “We are not doing this play realistically or psychologically, we are doing it musically.”

Catherine Laws is a musicologist and pianist based in York, England. Much of her research focuses on the relationship between music, language, and meaning. Her book, Headaches Among the Overtones: Music in Beckett/Beckett in Music , appeared in December 2013 (Editions Rodopi).

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Wednesday Evening, October 14, 2015, at 7:30

The Lovely Mill Maiden Mark Padmore , Tenor Kristian Bezuidenhout , Fortepiano

SCHUBERT Die schöne Müllerin (1823) Das Wandern Wohin? Halt! Danksagung an den Bach Am Feierabend Der Neugierige Ungeduld Morgengruß Des Müllers Blumen Tränenregen Mein! Pause Mit dem grünen Lautenbande Der Jäger Eifersucht und Stolz Die liebe Farbe Die böse Farbe Trockne Blumen Der Müller und der Bach Des Baches Wiegenlied

This program is approximately 70 minutes long and will be performed without intermission. Please join the artists in the Alice Tully Hall lobby immediately following the performance for a White Light Lounge.

This performance is made possible in part by the Josie Robertson Fund for Lincoln Center.

Fortepiano by R.J. Regier, Freeport, Maine Please make certain all your electronic Alice Tully Hall, Starr Theater devices are switched off. Adrienne Arsht Stage

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Synopsis of the Song Texts By Susan Youens

Die schöne Müllerin

A miller lad leaves his place of employment, goes wandering in search of a new mill, and finds one (“Das Wandern,” “Wohin? ” and “Halt!”). He falls in love with the miller’s beau - tiful daughter (“Danksagung an den Bach,” “Am Feierabend,” “Der Neugierige,” and “Ungeduld”), and hopes for love’s realization (“Morgengruß,” “Des Müllers Blumen,” and “Tränenregen”). The lad’s love is briefly reciprocated—or he deludes himself that she loves him back—and he wonders what will follow (“Mein!” and “Pause”).

Tragedy begins when the miller maid obliquely announces her infatuation with the hunter in “Mit dem grünen Lautenbande” and the lad explodes in jealous rage, fear, and despair (“Der Jäger,” “Eifersucht und Stolz,” “Die liebe Farbe,” and “Die böse Farbe”). The lad resolves to kill himself in the brook that has been his confidant throughout the cycle (“Trockne Blumen” and “Der Müller und der Bach”).

The lad bids the brook to keep singing to him as he dies, and in the final song, the brook does so (“Des Baches Wiegenlied”).

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Note on the Program the following year (1824) as Op. 25 by the Viennese firm of Sauer & Leidesdorf. By Susan Youens Schubert dedicated the first edition to his Die schöne Müllerin , D.795 (1823) friend, the Baron Carl von Schönstein, who FRANZ SCHUBERT had a lyrical high baritone voice; we are told Born January 31, 1797, in Vienna that in his later years, the aristocratic singer Died November 19, 1828, in Vienna would receive mail addressed to “Baron von Schönstein, Journeyman Miller.” Die Approximate length: 70 minutes schöne Müllerin did not immediately strike the public fancy, and Schubert’s friend In late autumn 1816, the 23-year-old poet Franz Schober tried to comfort him, writ - Wilhelm Müller took part in a weekly artistic ing, “And your miller songs have also salon at the home of the Berlin privy coun - brought no great acclaim? These hounds cilor Friedrich August von Stägemann. have no feelings or minds of their own, and Others in the group included the artist they blindly follow the noise and opinions Wilhelm Hensel, who would later marry of others.” The “hounds” would soon Fanny Mendelssohn; his sister Luise Hensel, atone for their initial neglect. with whom Müller was in love; the historian Friedrich Förster; and the daughter of the In these 20 songs, Schubert spans the household, Hedwig von Stägemann. gamut from the pseudo-folk-song sound of Together, the young people created a “Das Wandern” to the formal complexities Liederspiel (song-play) on the venerable of “Die böse Farbe,” from the diatonic theme of the miller maid (Hedwig) wooed strains of “Mit dem grünen Lautenbande” by a gardener (Luise Hensel in a “pants to the radical harmonic language of role”), a hunter (Wilhelm Hensel), a miller’s “Pause,” from the hammered fury of “Der apprentice (Müller, predestined by his Jäger” to the exquisite tenderness of the name for the role), and a country squire elegy at the end. Schubert was a genius at (Förster). When the young Müller returned converting poetic ideas, images, characters, to Germany from Rome in 1818, he refash - and more into music, and a few examples ioned the song-play as a monodrama, spo - will have to suffice. When the lad in ken or sung by a single character, and gave “Ungeduld” harps on the same tune over it pride of place in his first poetic anthology : and over and stays in the same key, we hear Seventy-Seven Poems from the Post - his monomanaical fervor; he cannot sit still, humous Papers of a Wandering Horn- however, and his impatience is evident in Player (1821). thrumming triplets and chromaticism. Youthful ardor and impatience are again evi - When Schubert discovered this work, it dent in “Morgengruß,” a serenade that was at the beginning of the end of his life: starts with a preliminary bit of rehearsal: the he discovered that he had contracted piano begins with a two-bar phrase to which syphilis in late 1822 or early 1823, and it the lad will subsequently sing, “Good morn - was in 1823 that he set to music these ing, fair maid of the mill.” He is too impa - poems about a lad who dies in the after - tient to rehearse beyond the first phrase, math of erotic experience. “Imagine a man however, and quickly concludes the intro - whose health will never be right again… duction so that he can utter his thoughts whose most brilliant hopes have aloud. In “Die böse Farbe,” when the perished…whom enthusiasm for all things miller says that he would like “to make the beautiful threatens to forsake,” Schubert green grass deathly pale [totenbleich] with wrote to a friend—this is the backdrop to Die my weeping,” Schubert’s lad realizes a split schöne Müllerin . The cycle was pub lished second after he sings “toten—” (deathly)

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that he is actually contemplating his own might pray for the person’s soul, and death. The shock sends him reeling and Schubert accordingly rings the passing bell the music jolting upwards. In “Trockne in the outermost tones of the right-hand Blumen,” the miller tries to part as the book sings a lullaby to the dying convince himself that there is meaning lad. A majestic spiritual vision unfolds at in his death, that love will triumph in resur - the close: when the brook tells of the full rection. In Müller, that delusion dies moon rising into the heavens, dispelling somewhere in the space between this the mist symbolic of all that evades our poem and the one following, but Schubert understanding in this life, it insists upon makes us hear false reassurance dying the ultimate victory of harmony and beauty away in the piano postlude. In every bar in the realm of the infinite. of every song, there are similar marvels to be found. Susan Youens is the J. W. Van Gorkom Professor of Music at the University of At the end, neither Müller nor Schubert Notre Dame and the author of eight books allows tragedy to triumph. In Vienna, on lieder. parish churches would ring the “Zügen - glöcklein,” or “passing bell,” when one of —Copyright © 2015 by Lincoln Center for the their parishioners was dying so that others Performing Arts, Inc.

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Thursday Evening, October 15, 2015, at 7:30

Swan Song Mark Padmore , Tenor Kristian Bezuidenhout , Fortepiano

BEETHOVEN An die ferne Geliebte (1816) Auf dem Hügel sitz ich spähend Wo die Berge so blau Leichte Segler in den Höhen Diese Wolken in den Höhen Es kehret der Maien Nimm sie hin denn, diese Lieder

SCHUBERT Schwanengesang (1828) Liebesbotschaft Kriegers Ahnung Frühlingssehnsucht Ständchen Aufenthalt In der Ferne Abschied Der Atlas Ihr Bild Das Fischermädchen Die Stadt Am Meer Der Doppelgänger Die Taubenpost

This performance is made possible in part by the Josie Robertson Fund for Lincoln Center.

Fortepiano by R.J. Regier, Freeport, Maine Please make certain all your electronic Alice Tully Hall, Starr Theater devices are switched off. Adrienne Arsht Stage

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Note on the Program bare autum nal bushes and the singer bids them bear his lamentation to the beloved, By Susan Youens Beethoven darkens the music and turns the separated syllables into stylized gasps of An die ferne Geliebte , Op. 98 (1816) pain. But whenever sorrow intrudes, the LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN Born December 16, 1770, in Bonn, protagonist resolutely converts it into cele - Germany brations of nature, love, joy, vitality, and Died March 26, 1827, in Vienna song in “Diese Wolken in den Höhen” (These Clouds in the Heights) and “Es Approximate length: 15 minutes kehret der Maien” (May Returns, the Meadow Blooms). With its lilting open inter - The creation of Beethoven’s single song vals in the left-hand part, “Es kehret der cycle, An die ferne Geliebte (To the distant Maien” is the essence of all things pastoral— beloved), followed in the wake of multiple until the end, when tears reappear. But this is difficulties in the composer’s life, including sorrow’s last foray: in the sublime sixth song, the loss of the “Immortal Beloved” and a “Nimm sie hin denn, diese Lieder” (Take crisis about what new compositional path Them, Then, These Songs), the protagonist to take in the wake of the “heroic” sym - is finally able to conquer his pain by bidding phonies. A 20-year-old medical student the distant beloved to sing these very named Alois Jeitteles struck gold by send - songs. The pulsating chords—Beethoven’s ing Beethoven poems on two of the com - stock gesture for cosmic aspects of poser’s favorite themes: the sublimation of nature—and the tender lingering on the erotic desire into art and the power of song words “und du singst” (and you will sing) to make reunion with the distant beloved tell of desire transformed by an act of ulti - possible. Each song culminates in a piano mate metamorphosis into poetry and song. corridor leading directly into the next seg - ment of this six-part song; the only truly Schwanengesang , D.957 (1828) final cadence is the last one. FRANZ SCHUBERT Born January 31, 1797, in Vienna In the first song, “Auf dem Hügel sitz ich Died November 19, 1828, in Vienna spähend” (I Sit on the Hill Peering), the singer resolves to “sing songs” to tell the Approximate length: 53 minutes beloved of his pain. After five statements of a perfectly constructed melody, the piano Schwanengesang is a compilation of two figuration varied each time, the “ending” different sets of songs, with Schubert’s metamorphoses into another key to initiate last song appended at the end. The Berlin the second song, “Wo die Berge so blau” music journalist/novelist/poet Ludwig (Where the Mountains So Blue). Beethoven Rellstab wrote in his memoirs that he had signals the inwardness of these reflections sent poems to Beethoven in spring 1825, by having the singer chant the second then recovered them from the composer’s stanza on a single pitch while the piano, estate, but Beethoven’s factotum Anton enveloping the vocal line on either side, Schindler insisted that he gave Schubert takes over the melody established in the the poems after Beethoven’s death. The first verse. For the third song, “Leichte startlingly original poet Heinrich Heine’s Segler in den Höhen” (Light Clouds giant (88 poems) cycle Die Heimkehr (The Drifting on High), the composer wittily con - Homecoming) was published in both the verts birds flying amidst puffs of cloud into Reisebilder (Travel Images) of 1826 and the separated syllables of light, airy vocal Buch der Lieder of 1827 . According to the melody. When the birds descend to the singer Karl von Schönstein, the dedicatee

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of Die schöne Müllerin , Schönstein asked postlude, we realize that this was a sere - to borrow Schubert’s copy of the Buch der nade in vain. Lieder , and Schubert gave it to him, saying he had no more use for it. In his manu - In “Aufenthalt” (Resting Place), the rhyth - script, Schubert wrote out the seven mic conflict throughout is an expression of Rellstab and six Heine songs without any acute emotional distress: the singer com - title page or numbering, the completed pares his grief to surging river, roaring for - manuscript dated August 1828. When the est, and immutable rock. The singer of the publisher Tobias Haslinger bought the Byronic anti-litany “In der Ferne” (Far songs from Schubert’s brother Ferdinand, Away) challenges all of nature and the cos - he added the single song “Die mos on the brink of self-destruction. Taubenpost,” composed in October 1828, Schubert found in this suicidal desperation for the posthumous collection entitled, the stuff of massive musical maneuvers: appropriately, Swan Song . the jolt of a semitone downwards at the words “Mutterhaus Hassenden” would not In the first Rellstab song, “Liebesbot - become standard practice until Wagner schaft” (Tidings of Love)—Schubert’s final post-1850, and the huge Neapolitan jolt essay in water music—the lover bids a little near the end is a hallmark of Schubert’s har - brook to convey greetings to the distant monic language. From “Erlkönig” to beloved. One can hear his fervor in the “Abschied” (Farewell), horses ride through unforgettable bounding leap upwards, both Schubert’s songs, and this pianistic steed ebullient and desperate, at the end of the carries the persona through a paradoxically first and last stanzas. The beloved’s happy farewell—but the merry tone is dreams in the first song give way in willed. In the E-flat major key of “Kriegers Ahnung” (Soldier’s Forebod ing) Beethoven’s “Les Adieux” Piano Sonata, to a warrior’s nocturnal memories of Op. 81a (in the song’s original tonality), the bygone dreams at his sweetheart’s breast; singer bids a protracted farewell to a place his noble gravity suggests high-born he clearly loves and does not want to leave. knights of yore. Schubert contrasts the dark, columnar chords of the singer’s On January 12, 1828, Schubert and his death-haunted present with the warm, fluid friends met to discuss the “travel ideas of passage in major mode that tells of a past Heine,” perhaps the 1826 Reisebilder beautified by love. (Travel Images), which includes the gigantic poetic cycle Die Heimkehr (The Home- “Frühlingssehnsucht” (Spring Longing) c oming). In 1827 Heine gathered together begins with soft, thrumming excitement to his youthful poetry for publication as the tell of springtime’s arrival, of rising sap and Buch der Lieder (Book of Songs), a literary rising desire. This is a perpetual motion bestseller. Schubert chose only six poems song, but with pauses that tell of inner from Heine’s Homecoming , in which a impasse before the gently urgent motion newly corrosive, ironic voice appears on the resumes. In the famous “Ständchen” literary scene, but these six songs are a (Serenade), an ardent wooer—a bit of a quantum leap into the future of music. roué—attempts to lure the maiden he desires out of her bedchamber by night in Heine’s Byronic Titan makes melodramatic order “to make me happy.” Schubert fills mockery of immense misery in “Der his song of seduction with vulnerability and Atlas” (Atlas). What gripped Schubert’s ambivalence; the exquisite melody is as imagination was the notion of being much melancholy as it is ardent. When the chained to irrevocable horror and attempt - impassioned plea gives way to the piano ing in vain to break free of it; he borrows

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the circular figure in the bass from the seashore, she weeps symbolic tears, Beethoven’s last piano sonata, Op. 111 in and he declares himself destroyed by the C minor, and chains his Atlas to it. Packing experience. Schubert contrasts solemn, so much sound and fury into a small song hymn-like stanzas in pure C major with is a challenge to all those who would den - quivering, tremulous, darker passages. igrate song composition as incapable of Schubert’s final section is a battle to keep ambition on a Beethovenian scale. darkness from wholly overwhelming the memory of past beauty. The poet in “Ihr Bild” (Her Picture) stares at an image of the sweetheart, who has In “Der Doppelgänger” (The Double), the left him or died (Schubert thought it was singer sees a spectral image of himself the latter), and fancies that the image histrionically aping yet another earlier self. comes to life: this is the Narcissus myth Schubert borrowed a Baroque fugue sub - modernized. In this bleak song, shot ject and makes it modern for this scenario through with echoes, the singer cannot of lost time, past time, repressed memo - really believe his loss: it is the piano, made ries, and the present. The climaxes in this of sterner stuff, that tells us at the end of song are so shattering that Johannes irrevocable grief. Brahms could not forget them: he quotes the singer’s last phrase in his own song In “Das Fischermädchen” (The Fisher- “Herbstgefühl.” maiden), a buoyant, charming singer, confi - dent of his powers of attraction, woos a Schubert’s last song, “Die Taubenpost” lower-class girl with his pearls of poetry and (Pigeon-post), is the most fitting of song. One can interpret this serenade either epigraphs on his life and art. Here, he as sincerity or mockery, with Schubert hint - makes tonal adventurism sound effortless, ing that the persona is not quite the genius as in the sudden shift to another bright he proclaims himself to be. The ambiguities place to suggest the rich contentment of of song are on display here. the word “überreich,” the way “Sehnsucht” or “yearning” comes home In classic horror-movie fashion, the per - to the original key at the end, and the sona of “Die Stadt” (The Town) stares at touches of intensity that are more Schubert darkness until, finally, daylight reveals— than the author of the text, Johann Gabriel absence. For the first and third stanzas, we Seidl, a determinedly optimistic poet. But hear echoes of the Baroque, the rhythmic darkness is never allowed to establish a patterns reminiscent of Handel or Rameau. foothold, whatever its faint traces here. In the introduction and second stanza, the infamous “horror chord” of German Romantic opera comes out of nowhere, Susan Youens is the J. W. Van Gorkom goes nowhere, and is repeated over and Professor of Music at the University of over. At song’s end, the single pitch C is Notre Dame and the author of eight books isolated—a mystery with no answer. on lieder.

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Saturday Evening, October 17, 2015, at 7:30 Post-performance discussion with Mark Padmore, Kristian Bezuidenhout, and Benjamin Sosland

Winter Journey Mark Padmore , Tenor Kristian Bezuidenhout , Fortepiano

SCHUBERT Winterreise (1827) Gute Nacht Die Wetterfahne Gefrorne Tränen Erstarrung Der Lindenbaum Wasserflut Auf dem Flusse Rückblick Irrlicht Rast Frühlingstraum Einsamkeit Die Post Der greise Kopf Die Krähe Letzte Hoffnung Im Dorfe Der stürmische Morgen Täuschung Der Wegweiser Das Wirtshaus Mut Die Nebensonnen Der Leiermann

This program is approximately 75 minutes long and will be performed without intermission. Please join the artists in the Alice Tully Hall lobby immediately following the performance for a White Light Lounge.

This performance is made possible in part by the Josie Robertson Fund for Lincoln Center.

Fortepiano by R.J. Regier, Freeport, Maine Please make certain all your electronic Alice Tully Hall, Starr Theater devices are switched off. Adrienne Arsht Stage WhiteLightFestival.org 51 10-14 Schubert.qxp_GP 10/2/15 11:58 AM Page 14

Synopsis of the Song Texts By Susan Youens

Winterreise

An unnamed, unknown man—older than the youth of Die schöne Müllerin— resolves to leave his former sweetheart’s town. She or her parents or all three have rejected him for a wealthier man, and the rejection impels an inner journey into the soul (“Gute Nacht”). As he leaves by night, he bids her a tender, wistful farewell that she does not hear.

In “Die Wetterfahne,” he compares her heart to a weather vane spinning in the wind, wonders why his tears freeze on his face despite the heat of his grief (“Gefrorne Tränen”), and fears losing all memory of her should his frozen heart ever thaw (“Erstarrung”). He recalls the linden tree where they used to meet, a tree whose leaves now whisper of death (“Der Lindenbaum”). He fancies that his tears will flow to the beloved’s house (“Wasserflut”), carves the birth-and-death dates of their love in the frozen river’s crust (“Auf dem Flusse”), and feels as if he is hounded out of her town by the crows on the rooftops (“Rückblick”).

He follows a will-o’-the-wisp without caring how he will find a way out (“Irrlicht”). Soul- sick weariness (“Rast”) and the shattering disillusionment of awaking from dreams to cold reality (“Frühlingstraum”) are the next traumas along the way, leading to an utter sense of loneliness (“Einsamkeit”).

The post coach enlivens the cycle at mid-point (“Die Post”), as the wanderer wonders why his heart leaps when there is no prospect of a letter, of any communication from another human being. He broods increasingly on death and alienation from other human beings, with one outburst of stormy despair and a dance of delusion as he follows another will-o’-the-wisp (“Der greise Kopf,” “Die Krähe,” “Letzte Hoffnung,” “Im Dorfe,” “Der stürmische Morgen,” and “Täuschung”).

In the crucial 20th song (“Der Wegweiser”), he sees in his mind the “road I must tread, by which no one has yet returned,” but Death turns him away from the cemetery there - after (“Das Wirtshaus”). Longing for death but unable to kill himself, he keeps going somehow, with delusory courage (“Mut”) and resigned sadness (“Die Nebensonnen”). At the end (“Der Leiermann”), he encounters a beggar-musician (a hallucination? his dou - ble?), beyond the bounds of society, unheard, grinding away at his music regardless, and asks if he might go with him. There is no answer.

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Note on the Program the echoing silence following the dying- away drone of the hurdy-gurdy. By Susan Youens

Before the journey begins, much has Winterreise , D.911 (1827) already happened to this character. In the FRANZ SCHUBERT Born January 31, 1797, in Vienna first song, “Gute Nacht” (Good Night), he Died November 19, 1828, in Vienna tells us that he came to this place a stranger and departs still a stranger, unsuc - Approximate length: 75 minutes cessful once more in his quest for belong - ing. Before he leaves, he bids the sleeping According to Schubert’s friend Franz von sweetheart a tender farewell, made magi - Schober, Schubert discovered the poetic cal by the shift from minor to major mode. cycle Die Winterreise in Schober’s The repeated notes/chords in the piano library—when and which textual source, symbolize the journey and return at signifi - he does not say. The poetry made its way cant points throughout the cycle. into the world in three stages: the first 12 poems in the periodical Urania for 1823, The weathervane, changing direction with ten subsequent poems in another periodi - each changing breeze, is a traditional sym - cal that same year, and finally the complete bol for infidelity. In “Die Wetterfahne” poetic cycle, with “Die Post” and (The Weathervane), we hear both the wan - “Täuschung” added, in Müller’s Poems derer’s anger and the weathervane from the Posthumous Papers of a whirling about in gusts of icy wind. The Wandering Horn-Player , vol. 2: Songs of tears that come as if from nowhere and Love and Life . We can tell from Schubert’s freeze on the wanderer’s face in autograph manuscript, dated February “Gefrorne Tränen” (Frozen Tears) hint 1827, that the composer’s first source was that something deeper than love’s betrayal Urania , whose 12 poems he thought con - is at the heart of his psychological turmoil. stituted a complete poetic cycle. When he “Erstarrung” (Numbness) exemplifies the discovered the finished work, he set the tug-of-war between reason and emotion in remaining 12 poems in order as he found the first half of the cycle: he searches fran - them (except for switching “Mut” and tically for mementos of her because he “Die Nebensonnen” around) and told his knows that without them, her image will friends that these songs “have cost me eventually vanish from his heart. more effort than any of my other songs.” The linden tree in “Der Lindenbaum” When Schubert set these poems to music, (The Linden Tree) is where lovers in he was confronting his own probable fate. German literature traditionally have their Enough was known in the 1820s about rendezvous. The rustling leaves seem as if syphilis for Schubert to realize that this dis - saying to the wanderer, “Come to me and ease often led to dementia and paralysis find peace”—but the only way to be one before release in death. He might have with nature is to die. The wanderer resists wondered as he read “Der Leiermann” and journeys onward. whether he too would be condemned to suffer what the wanderer confronts: a In “Wasserflut” (Flood), he imagines future with his creative faculties numbed rivers of tears flowing all the way to her and the capacity to create music restricted house, and in “Auf dem Flusse” (On the to a single phrase, repeated mindlessly Stream), he asks his heart whether living over and over. The journey ends with a torrents flow beneath its frozen crust. question for which there is no answer, only Grief continually looks back at what is lost,

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and that is what the wanderer does in Estrella , where this same music told of a “Rückblick” (Backward Glance). Twice, cloud-maiden who lured a hunter to follow Müller invokes the will-o’-the-wisp, the her until he tumbled to his death. The wan - ghostly light in bogs, swamps, and derer knows that the will-o’-the-wisp he marshes. Here, it perhaps symbolizes the sees is an illusion, but he is so desperate girl who lured the wanderer into the emo - that he follows it anyway. tional chasm through which he meanders aimlessly in “Irrlicht” (Will-o’-the-Wisp). As he asks yet again why his journey is so difficult, he sees a signpost in his mind— The wanderer pauses in his journey for the “Der Wegweiser” (The Signpost)—for the first time in “Rast” (Rest), but the trudging road he must take, a road “by which no footsteps continue in his head. Finally falling one has yet returned.” He does not say asleep in “Frühlingstraum” (Dream of what it is: surely death, but we gather from Spring), he dreams of springtime and recip - the next song, “Das Wirtshaus” (The Inn), rocal love in strains of Mozartean delicacy that it will take longer to die than the wan - and clarity, only to be twice awakened to derer would wish. When he stops at a cold reality. In the wake of this experience, cemetery and begs for a room at the he feels even more solitary than before in “inn,” he is turned away by the “pitiless “Einsamkeit” (Loneliness). tavern” Death.

“Die Post” (The Post) re-energizes the The false courage he tries to assemble in cycle midway, with its horn calls and clip- “Mut” (Courage) quickly evaporates, fol - clopping horses’ hooves. But thereafter, lowed by a song of profound resignation: the wanderer longs repeatedly for death; in “Die Nebensonnen” (The Mock Suns). “Der greise Kopf” (The Gray Head), he The mysterious three suns could be hopes that the frost on his hair means that Müller’s symbolic use of the atmospheric he has grown old overnight and will soon phenomenon known as parhelion, in which die, and in “Die Krähe” (The Crow), he sun refracted through ice crystals produces hopes that the crow circling overhead is a illusory images of the sun on either side. death omen. “Letzte Hoffnung” (Last Here, the illusions symbolize the beloved’s Hope) is filled with complex and disorient - eyes, which vanished from his sight. ing rhythmic patterns that tell of an extremity of despair and of leaves that fall At the “end” of the cycle (not truly an end) from the trees at random. in “Der Leiermann” (The Organ-Grinder), the wanderer sees a hurdy-gurdy player, In the next song, “Im Dorfe” (In the grinding out music so elemental as to be Village), the wanderer bitterly scorns other deprived of all possibility of transcen - people and their ability to dream and hope; dence. This is living death, and it is worse we hear the rattling of dog chains and the by far than physical extinction. villagers’ snoring refracted through the singer’s mockery. The next morning, he sees the image of his own heart in the Susan Youens is the J. W. Van Gorkom storm-tossed clouds and fiery dawn of Professor of Music at the University of “Der stürmische Morgen” (The Stormy Notre Dame and the author of eight books Morning), but the Lear-on-the-heath defi - on lieder. ance is over almost before we can take in its violence. —Copyright © 2015 by Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Inc. For “Täuschung” (Illusion), Schubert bor - rows from his 1821–22 opera Alfonso und 54

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vocalists, chamber ensembles, and recital - of artistic programming, national leader in ists. One of the most significant music pre - arts and education and community rela - sentation series in the world, Great tions, and manager of the Lincoln Center Performers runs from October through campus. A presenter of more than 3,000 June with offerings in Lincoln Center’s free and ticketed events, performances, Avery Fisher Hall, Alice Tully Hall, Walter tours, and educational activities annually, Reade Theater, and other performance LCPA offers 15 programs, series, and festi - spaces around New York City. From sym - vals including American Songbook, Great phonic masterworks, lieder recitals, and Performers, Lincoln Center Festival, Lincoln Sunday morning coffee concerts to films Center Out of Doors, Midsummer Night and groundbreaking productions specially Swing, the Mostly Mozart Festival, and the commissioned by Lincoln Center, Great White Light Festival, as well as the Emmy Performers offers a rich spectrum of pro - Award–winning Live From Lincoln Center , gramming throughout the season. which airs nationally on PBS. As manager of the Lincoln Center campus, LCPA provides Lincoln Center for the Performing support and services for the Lincoln Center Arts, Inc. complex and the 11 resident organizations. Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts In addition, LCPA led a $1.2 billion campus (LCPA) serves three primary roles: presen ter renovation, completed in October 2012.

Lincoln Center Programming Department Jane Moss, Ehrenkranz Artistic Director Hanako Yamaguchi, Director, Music Programming Jon Nakagawa, Director, Contemporary Programming Jill Sternheimer, Director, Public Programming Lisa Takemoto, Production Manager Charles Cermele, Producer, Contemporary Programming Kate Monaghan, Associate Director, Programming Mauricio Lomelin, Producer, Contemporary Programming Julia Lin, Associate Producer Regina Grande, Assistant to the Artistic Director Luna Shyr, Programming Publications Editor Madeleine Oldfield, House Seat Coordinator Kathy Wang, House Program Intern

For the White Light Festival Matt Frey, Lighting Design Josh Benghiat, Lighting Design Associate Megan Young, Supertitles Tatiana Stola, Company Manager Jenniffer Desimone, Production Coordinator

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