Page 199 - Winterreise Coverage Book, 2021 - 22

There is no denying the arresting grandeur of the setting of
Bridcut’s Winterreise. Bright white, deep snow, stunning Alpine peaks –

and that curious modern structure set amidst it all. Appl is as striking as
the landscape, as perfectly chiselled as those mountains, with deep
blue eyes which burn with passion or glaze with tears in the more
poignant songs or passages, or occasionally fix the viewer with an

unsettling directness which only adds to the power of Müller’s text and
Schubert’s music. He has a wonderfully clear, clean voice, with a range
from a whispered pianissimo (the level of control here is impressive) to

raging fortissimo. James Baillieu, playing a gorgeous Bösendorfer piano,
whose case (was it rosewood?) seems to hark back to a Schubert- era
instrument, brings depth and clarity to the music. He avoids

ponderousness in the darker songs and there are moments of delicious
sweetness or tender poignancy – in Der Lindenbaum or Frühlingstraum,
for example – but it is in the darker or more desolate songs that Baillieu

really portrays the wanderer’s predicament, often simply through
judiciously placed single notes or a fractional pause (agogic accent)
before placing a note (Gefrorne Tränen, for example). The closing
song, Der Leiermann, is absolutely devastating in its spare simplicity.