Page 69 - Winterreise Coverage Book, 2021 - 22
P. 69
The piano accompaniments are miracles of saying much with few notes. They evoke the trudging
footsteps of the opening “Good night,” the windblown “Weathervane,” the drip of “Frozen Tears,”
the postman’s horn call in “The Post.”
In the almost hallucinatory song, “The Mock Suns,” the piano accompaniment is eclipsed entirely in
the bass clef. Finally, in repetitive patterns over a drone, the piano evokes the heedless “Hurdy-
Gurdy Player,” a kind of doppelgänger for the traveler: “No one wants to listen,/No one looks at
him,/And the dogs growl/Around the old man.” Stripped to barest essences, few moments in
classical music are more stark — and devastating.
