CAL PERFORMANCES PRESENTS PROGRAM NOTES

Sunday, March 21, 2010, 3pm Schubert’s “Real Swansong”: a two-part tale of a young man, unlucky in love, Zellerbach Hall , Op. 89, d911 (1828) wandering across a winter landscape had parallels with Die schöne Müllerin of four years earlier, but Müller’s new poems elicited even greater pathos , tenor Schubert and the from Schubert’s pen. It seems likely that the cir- cumstances of Schubert’s own life lent him par- , piano The genre of thelied —that particular kind of song ticular empathy with Müller’s poetic monodrama. whose genesis is inextricably linked to the poetry of Enough was known about the terminal stages of German Romanticism with its themes of lost love, syphilis in the 1820s for him to realize that he was death and angst—was central to the creative output confronting his own fate: from the onset of his ill- PROGRAM of the Viennese composer (1797– ness in early 1823, Schubert had lived with physical 1828). His first surviving lied dates from his 15th impairment and chronic anxiety. As he approached year, and Schubert scholar Robert Winter surmises the fourth anniversary of his illness, he had grap- Franz Schubert (1797–1828) Winterreise, Op. 89, d911 (1828) that he wrote the last of his more than 600 com- pled repeatedly with depression and despair but pleted songs only a few weeks before his premature maintained extraordinary resolve in the knowl- 1. Gute Nacht death at the age of 31. Schubert had a lifelong pas- edge that this illness usually ended in dementia sion for poetry, and his first encounter with Goethe and paralysis. Müller’s monodrama of physical 2. Die Wetterfahne led him to more than 150 poets over a 17-year ca- and emotional separation must have been deeply 3. Gefrorene Tränen reer as he diligently sought out verses that he could resonant. recalled the gathering 4. Erstarrung set to music. Some two-thirds of Schubert’s works at which Schubert previewed Winterreise (“Winter 5. Der Lindenbaum are lieder, and it was through these that he became Journey” or “Winter’s Journey”) for a small circle 6. Wasserflut famous in his lifetime. Legend has it that, on his of friends: 7. Auf dem Flusse deathbed, Beethoven read through some manu- For some time, Schubert appeared very scripts of Schubert’s lieder and remarked “truly, in 8. Rückblick upset and melancholy. When I asked him Schubert there is a divine spark!” Schubert’s unique 9. Irrlicht what was troubling him, he would say only, contribution to the genre was described by one of 10. Rast “Soon you will hear and understand.” One his closest friends, Joseph von Spaun: 11. Frühlingstraum day he said to me, “Come over to Schober’s In Lieder he stands unexcelled, even un- 12. Einsamkeit today and I will sing you a cycle of hor- approached.... Every one of his songs is rifying [schauerlicher] songs. I am anxious 13. Die Post in reality a poem on the poem he set to to know what you will say about them. 14. Der greise Kopf music.... Who among those who had the They have cost me more effort than any 15. Die Krähe good fortune to hear some of his greatest of my other songs.” So he sang the entire 16. Letzte Hoffnung songs does not remember how this music Winterreise through to us in a voice full of made a long familiar poem new for him, 17. Im Dorfe emotion. We were utterly dumbfounded by how it was suddenly revealed to him and 18. Der stümische Morgen the mournful, gloomy tone of these songs, penetrated to his very depth. 19. Täuschung and Schober said that only one of them, 20. Der Wegweiser “Der Lindenbaum” (“The Linden Tree”), had appealed to him. To this Schubert 21. Das Wirtshaus The genesis of Winterreise 22. Mut replied, “I like these songs more than all the rest, and you will come to like them 23. Die Nebensonnen How the work of the disregarded Prussian poet as well.” 24. Der Leiermann Wilhelm Müller (1794–1827) came to Schubert’s attention is unknown, but both of the com- It is not surprising that Schubert’s friends were poser’s song cycles—Die schöne Müllerin and puzzled by the gloomy tone given the predomi- Please note that Mr. Bostridge and Mr. Drake will perform the song cycle without intermission. Winterreise—are settings of Müller’s poetry: what- nance of minor keys and declamatory vocal lines ever the reason, in February 1827 Schubert became in a narrow range replacing the spontaneous, lyri- This afternoon’s performance is made possible, in part, by Patron Sponsors Linda and Will Schieber. preoccupied with the melancholy cycle of poems cal melodies characteristic of his earlier lieder. The Cal Performances’ 2009–2010 season is sponsored by Wells Fargo. entitled Die Winterreise. Its deeply inner drama, songs represent the voice of the poet as lover, and

4 CAL PERFORMANCES CAL PERFORMANCES 5 PROGRAM NOTES PROGRAM NOTES form a distinct narrative and dramatic sequence in developed over nearly two decades of musical alienation becomes painfully clear. Exhaustion But death rejects him decisively in Das which the poet, whose sweetheart has broken his friendship. Indeed, it is something of an irony that, pervades the musical atmosphere of Irrlicht (9), Wirtshaus (21)—in spite of the funeral march heart, takes leave of her house as she sleeps, and while Schubert’s reputation as a song composer was with its strange intervals and the yearning quality rhythm that permeates the piano prelude and in- begins his long journey through the frozen win- formed and sustained by his undeniable gift for lyr- of its wide-ranging melodic lines, and still more of vokes the “path…that has led me…to a graveyard.” ter night—walking along the river-bank and up a ical melodies, the melodies of few lieder composers Rast (10). Here the piano’s left hand repeats an os- For he finds no room at this “Inn of death,” and steep path to a remote village where he falls into depend as heavily on their piano accompaniments tinato figure (eighth-note to quarter-note rhythm) discovers that he is not to have a “lovely and sooth- an exhausted dream of love and springtime. Upon for their effect as do Schubert’s. InWinterreise, that suggests the weary traveler trudging by with a ing death” but is condemned to a living death as a waking, he feels reconciled to his loneliness and perhaps even more than in his earlier, more lyrical heavy burden of sorrow. poet-singer irrevocably set apart from society. So, continues on his way through the cold, the dark, songs, Schubert uses a variety of musical ideas in In Frühlingstraum (11), sleep works its decep- he sings, “…lead me onward, only onward, my and the barren winter landscape which serves to the piano to convey the moods and images of the tion through the piano’s sweet, major-key lulling trusty staff!” and, buoyed by the piano’s heroic dot- intensify his heartache. Along the way, he encoun- poetry including, at times, the innermost feelings figuration. But the dreamer faces his desolation in ted rhythms and rising figures that open Mut (22), ters the various people and things which appear of the poet-singer. the final couplet when he finds his heart still beat- we hear a few fleeting moments of vocal courage. in the songs. The work is an allegorical journey of The cycle opens with the piano’s steady walk- ing warmly after his dream: “Die Augen schless’ ich The rich major chords of the subdominant-in- the heart—and yet, the poet-singer’s first words, ing rhythm of eighth-notes which are emblem- wieder, Noch schlägt das Herz so warm” which is flected Die Nebensonnen (23) conjure up the glow- “Fremd bin ich eingezogen, Fremd zieh’ ich wieder atic of the dark journey upon which the poet is accompanied by a right-hand gesture in the piano ing hues of a sunset, but it is a heartbreaking sight. aus” (“I came here a stranger, I depart a stranger”), setting-out in the first song, Gute Nacht, as he suggestive of the heartbeat. The piano’s response The wander sees two phantom suns on either side hint at what the scholar of Schubert lieder, Susan leaves for ever his sleeping beloved (how different to his final question, devastating in its eloquent of the sun; like these illusory globes of light in the Youens, has described as “an existential dilemma from the happy, upbeat “wandering” of the miller finality—“when will you, leaves, at the window be sky, his sweetheart’s eyes shone on him and then beyond sorrow over lost love, as wrenching as that that the piano conjures in the opening song of Die green again? When will I hold my darling in my vanished. Lieder pianist Graham Johnson describes is; thereafter, over and over again, he asks himself schöne Müllerin!). arms?”—is a desolate A-minor chord, whose at- this triple meter song as “dance music in slow mo- variations on the fundamental question, ‘Why In Wetterfahne (2), the hollow octaves of the mosphere pervades the final song of the first part, tion,” and he perceptively remarks that “Schubert’s am I always a Fremdling, a stranger to others and piano, outlining arpeggios and chilly trills, invoke Einsamkeit (12). music encouraged romantic embraces from which to myself?’” the blustery wind whistling through the weather- Songs 13 to 24 are settings of poems that he himself was excluded” in the sense that Schubert Yet Schubert’s personal tragedy did not produce vane on her roof. The once-lyrical voice takes on a Schubert found published after he had finished set- felt himself to be the outsider, on the outside look- uniformly “gloomy” music. As the composition of sharp edge wrought by the bitterness of betrayal, ting the first part. In Die Post, the sound of the post ing in, and thus “many of his dances are suffused Winterreise progressed, he completed many other and ends with the satirical bravado of “eine reiche horn brings news from the town in hopeful strains with an almost physical sense of longing.” works, including (in February) the Piano Sonata in Braut” (“a rich bride”). A sharp break of tonality of E-flat major, soon quashed by the realization The final song, Der Leiermann (“The Organ A minor, d784, with its explosive emotional range separates this from the next song whose opening that there’s no news for the exiled lover. Der Greise Grinder”), is a heartrending end to the cycle. The and novel keyboard techniques, the convivial staccato chords in the piano symbolize the “frozen Kopf (14) reveals that the wanderer who yearns for left hand of the piano plays an ostinato of open Piano Trios in B-flat major d( 898) and E-flat major tears of ice” that the lover finds are falling from death, who walks with a staff, whose hair is whit- fifths throughout, conjuring up the drone of the (d929), the marvelously wide-ranging impromp- his cheeks. ened by the frost, is a young man—just like both hurdy-gurdy—a chromatic grace-note even sug- tus for piano (d899, d935), Eight Variations on a Der Lindenbaum contrasts the young man’s poet and composer who were almost exact contem- gests the creaking of the instrument. Over this, the theme from Hérold’s opera Marie for piano duet pleasant memories of a linden tree with the current poraries: Schubert had just turned 30, while Müller right hand plays the hurdy-gurdy’s plaintive melo- (d908), the Fantasia in C major for violin and piano reality. In warmer times, he lay dreaming beneath was not even 30 when his poems were published. dy that invokes the desolate scene of the barefoot (d934), and songs on texts by Leitner, Metastasio, the tree and carved loving words in its bark, but Letzte Hoffnung (16) opens with a disorient- old man, shunned by all, his fingers numb, and the Rochlitz and Schober. These, along with the pub- now the rustle of its leafless boughs in an icy wind ing piano prelude, suggestive of the poem’s falling dogs growling at his feet. In the tremendous final lication of almost 30 further works, made 1827 an calls him back to a rest that can only mean death. leaves, but also of the failing of the man’s mind as moments the wanderer, for the first time since he astonishing year. But Spaun recalled that the songs The piano’s fluttering triplet figuration in E major he gazes at a single leaf, hanging his hopes on it. bade goodbye to his false lover, speaks with a hu- of Winterreise “were his real swansong. From then which opens the song evokes the gentle breezes and In Der Wegweiser (20), we hear the death of man being, entreating this Wonderful Old Man, on he was a sick man, although his outward condi- whispering leaves of summer: the figure returns lat- melody, as the wanderer, unutterably weary and “Wünderlicher Alter, shall I go with you?”: the tion gave no immediate cause for alarm.” er, altered with chromatic harmonies, to depict the depressed, resorts to bleak, almost monotone, reci- melody is inflected upwards on “Alter.” And the cold wind and eerie rustling of the tree in winter, tation to question why his journey—his life—is so anguished final enquiry, “When I sing my songs, and the young man’s growing sense of delusion. different from other people’s and what compulsion will you play your hurdy-gurdy too?” in the high- Music and poetry fuse in Winterreise In Wasserflut (6), a single chromatic melisma drives him on. A metaphorical signpost crosses his est register of the voice, is refused any consolatory painting the word “Weh” (woe), signals the poet- path, pointing the way to “one road I must travel, answers; the piano postlude ends with the dying Performance of this monodrama demands the singer’s increasing anguish. Auf dem Flusse (7) and by which no one ever came back.” away of the hurdy-gurdy’s drone. kind of close partnership between singer and Rückblick (8) are central to the monodrama, for pianist that Ian Bostridge and Julius Drake have it is through them that the young man’s sense of

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An opera in scope and effect Ian Bostridge was a post- He was created a CBE in the 2004 New doctoral fellow in history Year’s Honours. In his introduction to the Peters Edition of at Corpus Christi College, Winterreise, Professor Max Müller, son of the poet, Oxford, before embarking The pianistJulius Drake lives remarked that Schubert’s two song cycles have on a full-time career as a in and specialises in a dramatic effect not unlike that of a full-scale singer. His international the field of chamber music, tragic opera; this is particularly true when they recital career includes working with many of the are performed by great lieder singers and pianists. the world’s major concert world’s leading artists, both in Like Die schöne Müllerin, Schubert’s Winterreise is halls and the Edinburgh, recital and on disc. not merely a collection of songs upon the theme Munich, , Aldeburgh He appears at all the major of lost or unrequited love, but is in effect a dra- and Festivals, including artistic resi- music centers: in recent sea- matic monologue, lasting over an hour in perfor- dencies at the Vienna Konzerthaus, the Amsterdam sons, concerts have taken him to the Aldeburgh, mance. Although individual songs are sometimes Concertgebouw, the Barbican Centre and his own Edinburgh, Munich, Schubertiade and Salzburg sung out of context in recitals (e.g., Gute Nacht, Perspectives series at Carnegie Hall and in 2008 at festivals; Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, New Der Lindenbaum and Der Leiermann), it is a work the Barbican, London. York; the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, and the which should be performed and heard in its en- In opera, he has sung Tamino, Jupiter () Philarmonie, Cologne; Théâtre du Châtelet and tirety, as in today’s program. The intensity and the and Aschenbach () at English Bostridge by Lukas Beck and Wiener Konzerthaus; Drake byMusée Marco Borggreve de Louvre, Paris; La Scala, Milan, and Liceu, emotional inflections of the poetry and its musical National Opera; Quint (The Turn of the Screw), Barcelona; Musikverein and Konzerthaus, Vienna; setting are carefully built up to express the sorrows Vašek (), Don Ottavio (Don and and BBC Proms, London. of the lover, and are developed to an almost patho- Giovanni) and Caliban () for the Mr. Drake’s passionate interest in song has logical degree from the first to the last note. David Royal Opera, Don Ottavio in Vienna and Nerone led to invitations to devise song series for, among Alden brings out the interior drama of the work (L’Incoronazione di Poppea), Tom Rakewell (The others, the Wigmore Hall, the BBC and the in a film he recently directed for British television Rake’s Progress) and Male Chorus (The Rape of Concertgebouw. A series of song recitals—Julius of Winterreise in which Ian Bostridge “delivers the Lucretia) in Munich. He has sung Aschenbach in Drake and Friends—in the historic Middle Temple most riveting, heart-wrenching portrayal of the Brussels, Amsterdam and Luxembourg and will Hall in London, has featured recitals with many protagonist” with Julius Drake at the piano. also sing the role at La Scala in Milan. outstanding artists. Josef von Spaun, who visited Schubert dur- His many award-winning recordings include He was appointed artistic director of Leeds ing his last days in the autumn of 1828, reported Schubert with Graham Johnson (Gramophone Lieder 2009 and the Machynlleth Festival in Wales periods of delirium during which Schubert “sang Award, 1996); Tom Rakewell with Sir John Eliot in 2009–2011. ceaselessly,” alternating with periods of lucidity Gardiner (Grammy Award, 1999); Schumann Mr. Drake’s many recordings include Sibelius during which he corrected the proofs for part 2 of with Julius Drake (Gramophone Award, 1998), songs and Grieg songs with Katarina Karneus (both Winterreise. On the 18th of November the young The Turn of the Screw with Hyperion); French sonatas with composer had to be restrained in his bed, and by 3 (Gramophone Award, 2003) and (Virgin); Spanish songs with Joyce Didonato o’clock the next afternoon, at the age of 31, he was (Grammy Award, 2010). (Eloquentia); Mahler songs and Tchaikovsky dead, mercifully freed from the Wanderer’s fate. His concert engagements include the Berlin songs with Christianne Stotijn (both Onyx); and Philharmonic, , Chicago Schumann Lieder with (EMI). Symphony, Boston Symphony, London Symphony, His live recordings from recitals at Wigmore Dr. Nalini Ghuman London Philharmonic, BBC Symphony, Rotterdam Hall for the Wigmore Live label have included Philharmonic, Royal Concertgebouw, New York concerts with Lorraine Hunt Liebersen, Joyce Philharmonic and Los Angeles Philharmonic or- Didonato, and Gerald chestras under Sir , Sir , Finley. He has made an award-winning series of Sir Andrew Davis, Seiji Ozawa, Riccardo Muti, recordings with Ian Bostridge for EMI, includ- , Daniel Barenboim, Daniel ing discs of Schumann, Schubert, Henze, Britten, Harding, Donald Runnicles, James Levine and The English Songbook and La Bonne Chanson. His . In January 2010, he sang the recent series of recordings with for world premiere of Hans Werner Henze’s Opfergang Hyperion has been widely acclaimed, and their with the Accademia Santa Cecilia in Rome under Barber songs and Schuman Heine Lieder have won Antonio Pappano. both the 2008 and 2009 Gramophone Awards.

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