Schubert: Winterreise D911

Composed in 1827, work on setting Wilhelm Müller’s poems made Schubert agitated and disturbed, according to friends. Indeed the songs shocked his friends when they first heard them: so powerful is the emotional content of the music that they still leave the listener emotionally shaken. The journey starts with ‘Gute Nacht’ (‘Good night’), as our traveller walks away from us into the bleak moonlit snowy landscape. Towards the end of the cycle, at ‘Der Wegweiser’ (‘The signpost’), he takes the path to his death.