In our third and final program dedicated to Schubert's song-cycle "Winterreise" (Winter Journey), we listen to the last eight "lieder" (songs) of this acclaimed masterpiece by the Austrian composer. In creating the second of his three great song-cycles, Schubert produced settings for voice and piano of 24 poems by Wilhelm Müller. In his all-too-brief life, Franz Schubert (1797-1828) composed some 610 songs, among them those of "Winterreise" and of his other two song-cycles, "Die Schöne Müllerin" (The Fair Maid of the Mill) and "Schwanengesang" (Swan Song). Austrian baritone Florian Boesch performed the entire "Winterreise" song-cycle this past January at Madrid's Teatro de la Zarzuela. Another of today's foremost performers of the "lied" is German baritone Matthias Goerne. Goerne has performed many times over the years at the Zarzuela, an emblematic 19th-century theater situated near the center of Madrid, and it is his performance of "Winterreise" that we've been listening to in these three programs. At his recent Zarzuela recital Florian Boesch was accompanied on the piano by Justus Zeyen, while Matthias Goerne is accompanied in his recording by Christoph Eschenbach.
