Page 192 - Winterreise Coverage Book, 2021 - 22

A stroke of genius. The British director John Bridcut, well established with
documentary film adaptations about musical personalities such as Janet

Baker, Benjamin Britten or Bernard Haitink, has opened himself

completely to the cinematographic quality of the "Winterreise" and staged

its sequences, its partly illogical sequence, with Appl as choreographic
partner.

The result is an intermediate thing of song recital and stage events, which

takes place alternately inside the tower or in the open landscape around it,
taking into account seasonal changes between spring and winter forces

such as frost and snowfall. The BBC, in cooperation with the Swiss SRF and

the streaming service Marquee TV, brought this unique performance to the
best in its fourth program, eagerly awaited by the relevant guild.

Appl has the right face of a mime at the height of his art, who can succeed

as a sound artist and actor alike. This is important for the filming of a

cascade of melodies such as Schubert's song cycle, which Robert Schumann
called "a compressed, lyrical madness". But the singer never falls into the

operatic, his movements remain within the framework of suppressed pain,

which screams eruptively again and again.

"A road that no one is returning yet"

In this film, the baritone is the guarantor of a double communication of

music and language, which makes it believable that the "Winter Journey" is
not only about love and pain. For a long time, this was the outstanding

theme of Wilhelm Müller's verses, which could be sung like à la recherche

de l'amour perdu... Appl, on the other hand, stretches the protagonist's

increasing emotional decline into a narrative about despair and mental
illness.