Page 122 - Winterreise Coverage Book, 2021 - 22

was such an intense week. I mean, on one hand, it’s terrible to learn this cycle in
four-and-a-half days – even on the morning of the concert I had to learn a few of

them. But thinking back, it was so amazing to spend such an intense, almost mad
time on this cycle. And since then, I’ve performed it quite often.’

For Baillieu, brought up in South Africa, there was something else that stood in the
way. ‘I was always quite scared of Winterreise because so much of it is to do with

the landscape – and I hadn’t seen snow until I moved to Europe when I was 23.
Africa’s a very different experience; there, the sun always comes out the next day!

And that makes quite a psychological impact. So this sustained period of barrenness
is something that was foreign to me until I moved over to Europe. But also, as with

Ben, a lot of people were telling me that you had to live and have a whole world of
experience before you learn Winterreise. But then I just did it. We had a small
festival, and I thought, “Well, you have to start somewhere!” And that’s how it began.’

Unlike the ‘plot’ of Schubert’s other cycle to words by Müller, Die schöne Müllerin,

that of Winterreise remains vague: it’s like a charcoal sketch rather than an oil
painting. There’s a narrative, but so many questions remain unanswered. ‘Like no

other piece, every time you do it, it’s a different journey,’ Appl suggests. ‘You get
numerous signposts – one song is even called “The Signpost” (“Der Wegweiser”) –
and many options of going in a different direction. I think that’s what makes it such

an outstanding piece. Even with the girl at the beginning, you don’t really know if
they were actually properly together. Was it she who broke it up or was it he? It

always gives just tiny hints and it opens your imagination. You can ask thousands of
questions, and each question leads to another question – which is a wonderful thing,

and why people like Fischer-Dieskau and many others could spend their entire lives
revisiting the cycle. That is the attraction for an audience, too, and also why there are

hundreds of recordings out there. That’s something I find incredibly rewarding: every
performance looks different.’

‘It’s amazing that every time you do it’, Baillieu adds, ‘you see one more accent, or
one more open fifth or something else that you hadn’t noticed before. And it’s also

amazing that you are able to put so much of yourself into the music. It’s genius! And
it just encourages a person to interpret, whereas in Die schöne Müllerin, what

Schubert puts on the page is quite prescriptive. But in Winterreise there’s a very
barren musical landscape: many open fifths, especially in the left hand, the IV–I, V–I