Franz Schubert’s Winterreise
Music’s most haunting cycle of songs
Sunday April 22, 3pm
Van Buren Hall,
6 Chatham Street, Kinderhook, NY 12106
Donation welcome, but optional. Reception follows.
Tenor Jon Morrell and pianist David Smith.
Note: Rescheduled from the February 24th program.
Jon Morrell
David Smith by TKPhelps
Tenor Jon Morrell and pianist David Smith (CITV Artistic Director) bring their extensive performing experience to bear on Franz Schubert’s haunting Winterreise (“Winter Journey”) of 1827, regarded by many as the most important and challenging song cycle ever written. In Schubert’s intense sequence of songs performers and listeners alike experience an unforgettable succession of wildly varying emotions, a truly memorable passage through maturity.
Along the way Schubert leaves nothing unexplored, from desperate uncertainty to exalted delusion. And in the end a powerful, but frustratingly ambiguous feeling of incompleteness prevails. Throughout the cycle Schubert’s natural imagery is vivid and resonant, each song inspiring in its remarkable beauty. Performers Morrell and Smith have lived with this cycle for many years and are delighted finally to be sharing it with others.
“With this concert Jon and I are especially pleased to be performing in the acoustically special Van Buren Hall of 1874,” says Smith. “The appealing scale of this wonderful space suggests that this will be for our listeners very much like a house concert – with all the immediacy and intimacy that format implies. Neither large nor small, Van Buren Hall is perfect for what we are offering, the journey our listeners will be taking. I know they will feel very much at home. As my own piano has moved to the hall for this concert and two others, I know that I will feel at home, just as Jon and I wish our listeners to be!”
