Winterreise

“I prefer these songs to any of my other ones, and you will come to like them too.” So said Franz Schubert to his friends, who had just heard him sing Winterreise for the first time, accompanying himself at the piano. The speechless friends sensed that they had witnessed a kind of farewell – and Schubert would have less than a year left to live. The twenty-four strange, sorrowful, and multifaceted songs would later become a cornerstone of the song repertoire – though difficult to grasp for those who first heard them. The singer gives voice to a solitary traveller in a desolate winter landscape that mirrors his inner desolation – lonely, forsaken, and lost. The piano part comments on and supports the shifting states of mind and emotion.

Harry Martinson, in Vägen ut (1936), wrote something that could well summarise Winterreise: “Here and there lay a village, but otherwise the road passed through forests of dark and ancient fir trees – no life, only the melancholy sighing of the trees. He recalls the escape vine – the movable liana with which he might swing from tree to tree – if… if…”

Carl Unander-Scharin tenor
Mattias Wager piano

Program
Franz Schubert Winterreise

Age limit: 6 years and older
Free admission
Please note that large bags, backpacks, suitcases, and strollers are not allowed in the church!