With the outpouring of new recordings of Schubert’s Winterreise we’ve had over the past few years, it would be sad if this one, released with little fanfare on a small, private label, got lost in the crush, because it is one of the best. American baritone Thomas Meglioranza’s earlier, 2007 disc of Schubert songs revealed him to be a natural interpreter of this repertoire, with a virile, agile voice and a knowledge of German that allowed him to respond expressively to each word of the text. Now, six years later, he follows up that programme with a performance of Winterreise in which his artistry as a Schubert interpreter has matured and deepened.
As Meglioranza begins Gute Nacht, the cycle’s first song, listeners who know the work from earlier recordings will be struck by the ideal match between the timbre and weight of his voice and the narrator of the tragic story that Winterreise tells. Schubert sets a sequence of poems by Wilhelm Mueller that follows a young man, devastated by the unfaithfulness of his beloved, who wanders the snowy countryside, gradually losing his mind. The poems are hyper-romantic in the manner of the period, but when made physical and real by Schubert’s miraculous music and sung by an interpreter who can reach its depths, they combine to become one of the most wrenching works in all of art.
Listeners who enjoy the classical vocal repertoire are past masters of the willing suspension of disbelief. The ability to disregard huge discrepancies of age and race between opera singers, for example, and the characters they are portraying is standard operating equipment for opera lovers. The same talent for setting physical realities aside is often required when approaching performances of the art-song repertoire.
The wandering, rejected lover of Winterreise is a youth, but most of the classic interpretations, from Husch’s famous 1933 account through those by Hotter, Pears, post-Gerald Moore Fischer-Dieskau, and on up to Goerne give the impression of men farther along in years than the naive vulnerability of Winterreise’s narrator suggests, although the best of those performances penetrate so deeply into the psychology of the work that even a heavy and very mature vocal timbre like that of Hans Hotter does not get in the way.
That said, what a pleasure it is to hear Winterreise sung by a youthful-sounding artist like Meglioranza. His voice has a ring to it that gives a special ardour to the agitation and despair of songs such as Erstarrung and the brief Der Stuermische Morgen. Earlier accounts by Peter Schreier (his first, 1979 live recording with Sviatoslav Richter), Ian Bostridge and the under-appreciated recent account by baritone Roman Trekel also convincingly project the youth of the narrator, but I find Meglioranza even more convincing in his portrayal of a young man unprepared for the emotional wounds that have been inflicted on him, and unable to absorb and get beyond them.
He is fluent in expressing the changes in emotional temperature that take place in many of the songs. Listen to Auf Dem Flusse, for example, in which the narrator addresses a river that he sees as a representation of his own heart and the changes that have overtaken it. Meglioranza’s voice takes on a thin, bleak tone as the man’s thoughts turn inwards to his own situation. His delivery of the lines that conclude the first two stanzas, spoken to the river, are chilling in a way that points to the madness that will gradually claim him. I’ve never heard this song performed more movingly.
Perhaps some artists have dug more deeply into the darkest of the songs — Der Wegweiser, for example (Hotter is magnificent here), and the concluding two, Die Nebensonnen and Der Leiermann, but as a performance of the entire cycle, Meglioranza has a place among the interpretations that anyone haunted by this Everest of the Lieder repertoire should hear. Given the degree to which he clearly identifies with this music, I suspect that Meglioranza will be returning to it at later points in his career, and it will be fascinating to see his interpretation grow.
The piano parts to the Winterreise songs are full of evocations of natural landscapes and village sounds, but also participate fully in the music’s psychological complexity. They require interpretive skills to match those of the singer, and Reiko Uchida, Meglioranza’s long-time accompanist, captures every detail.
Local listeners may already know that Thomas Meglioranza is half Thai. Perhaps some day — during a visit here to see relatives? — we might be treated to a live rendition of Winterreise.
I purchased my copy from amazon.com.
