Conway Hall’s collaboration with leading pianist Roger Vignoles continues with a weekend of public masterclasses and concerts centred around Schubert’s great song cycle Winterreise (A Winter Journey). Vignoles will share his many years’ experience of performing Winterreise with four exceptional young duos, who will together give a complete performance of the cycle on the Sunday evening. This is a rare opportunity to observe the construction and craft of the highest quality song performance.
Vignoles says, “I see a Masterclass not just as a teaching process pure and simple, but as an opportunity to give the audience an exploded diagram of the piece, so to speak, showing how the music works and illustrating the decisions that go into creating a performance, and bringing the song more vividly to life.”
On Sunday afternoon, baritone Edward Jowle will perform a selection of songs on the theme of ‘the wanderer’, and our own Director of Music, pianist Simon Callaghan who brings his “velvet gloved pianism of ravishing sensitivity” (The Strad) to Schubert’s fiendishly virtuosic Wanderer Fantasy.
We welcome respected musicologist Susan Youens, who will explore the theme of the ‘Wanderer’ in her afternoon talk, which exerted a huge influence on composers of the Romantic period, and which indeed underpins all the works presented throughout our Schubert Weekend.
Finally, to complete the weekend, Conway Hall presents the grand finale of Schubert: A Winterreise Weekend with a performance of the complete song cycle. Schubert completed Winterreise (A Winter Journey) in 1827, not long before his untimely death shortly before his 32nd birthday. The poetry (by Wilhelm Müller) is written in the voice of a young man who, upon losing his love, sets out on a journey in the depth of winter to escape her memory. The 24 songs that make up Winterreise explore the man’s darkest emotions, perfectly captured by Schubert’s timeless music.
The talented young musicians who have participated in three days of public masterclasses will present six songs each, in a group performance showcasing the results of their Schubert immersion.