Page 114 - Winterreise Coverage Book, 2021 - 22

‘Im Dorfe’: they don’t ask questions, they just sleep through life. So I think going on the journey is
his own choice – maybe he was pushed by the situation with this girl, but that’s not the main
reason.

Did you enjoy Joyce DiDonato’s recent interpretation of the cycle from the
woman’s point of view?

Yes! I think it’s so vital to try things out like this, putting things into different spaces, perspectives
and arrangements. It isn’t a replacement for the traditional way of performing and presenting it,
but it makes us ask questions, and that’s the most important thing as artists and audiences. I’ve
done something similar, where I perform the cycle with an actor who reads texts from an Austro-
Hungarian notebook from the period: the language is so close to the language of Winterreise:
there are barking dogs, there are Urlichten, and this whole relationship with the icy landscape, so
it’s quite an interesting project.

Some people don’t like the idea of disrupting the cycle by having spoken text in-between the
songs, but others do, because those ‘disruptions’ put you into a different place. When you get to
a song lasting just fifty seconds in that framework you really have to make it work, to be worth
those fifty seconds standing on its own.

You mentioned your relationship with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau – how did that
come about?

The attraction towards his singing of lieder was always so strong, and the zone where I felt most
comfortable was always German song; most of the teachers in Munich (and later in London) told
me you can never have a career based primarily around recitals, but I thought there was always
a chance…Then in around 2005 I read about a Schubertiade masterclass with Fischer-Dieskau in
Schwarzenberg, so I applied. You had to compile a list of ten Schubert songs you’d like to work
on with Fischer-Dieskau, and I’d heard from others that he could be very tricky in masterclasses
so I applied with thirty songs; a few weeks later a list came back with four Schubert songs and
none of them were part of my list!

On my first day at Schwarzenberg there was another young baritone sitting next to me; the
assistant came over to us before the start of the session to say that Fischer-Dieskau would like to
talk to him in the green-room, and we never saw him again…later on I found out that there was
always one person he removed!

So when I was called into the green-room on the last day I panicked - but he gave me all his
private contact-details and offered to work with me! And from that point on, he really became a
mentor until the end of his life in 2012 – I’d stay at his house for three or four nights and we’d
work for six hours a day, going through all my songs and opera and oratorio repertoire. He’d talk
to me not just about technique, but also about stage-presence and putting programmes
together. Sometimes he called me fifteen times a day, almost like a parent with a child, and I got
a lot of scores from him. The last time I saw him was four weeks before he died – he was very
weak and depressed, and somehow I just knew that I wouldn’t see him again.

Which other singers do you gravitate towards in the cycle?

There are so many fantastic recordings that it’s hard to choose…I like the early Thomas
Hampson, I adore Brigitte Fassbaender’s very strong, almost brutal approach to the cycle. As