Franz Schubert's Die Winterreise, D. 911, his emotionally devastated and devastating song cycle about a young man who takes off through a frozen landscape after being thrown over by his intended for a richer guy, was conceived for a tenor voice and is most often sung by tenors. But Schubert himself transposed it for baritone, and probably the best-known recording of modern times, that by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, takes advantage of the more restrained melancholy natural to the baritone voice. It's easy to think of Fischer ...
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Franz Schubert's Die Winterreise, D. 911, his emotionally devastated and devastating song cycle about a young man who takes off through a frozen landscape after being thrown over by his intended for a richer guy, was conceived for a tenor voice and is most often sung by tenors. But Schubert himself transposed it for baritone, and probably the best-known recording of modern times, that by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, takes advantage of the more restrained melancholy natural to the baritone voice. It's easy to think of Fischer-Dieskau when first hearing the rounded tones of Canadian baritone Gerald Finley, but really this interpretation of Die Winterreise is all his own. He applies a good deal of flexible lyricism, but at the cycle's most painful emotional moments, such as Auf dem Flusse (On the River, track 7, with emotion breaking through the explicitly corpse-like surface of the frozen river), he holds the tempo steady with uncanny effect. The overall shape of the cycle benefits from these contrasts, and...
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Add this copy of Schubert: Winterreise [Gerald Finley, Julius Drake] to cart. $33.13, new condition, Sold by Revaluation Books rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Exeter, DEVON, UNITED KINGDOM, published 2014 by HYPERION RECORDS: CDA68034.