SCHUBERT: Die Winterreise – Werner Gura, tenor/ Christoph Berner, pianoforte – Harmonia mundi 902066, 73:01 *****:
Harmonia mundi is going out of its way to confuse me; just a few weeks ago I reviewed this cycle with mark Padmore and Paul Lewis to generally good effect. Now they come out again with another Winterreise this time using a pianoforte. Being generally allergic to these instruments, as they are so often pathetically inadequate, I thought to myself that despite Gura’s excellence this was going to prove unlikable.Boy was I wrong.
If you read the other review you will find that I am a bit of a stickler for Schubert’s rhythms as notated, and here Gura and pianist Berner play them precisely and with unflappable accuracy—what a difference it makes! All of a sudden Schubert’s haunted wanderer has music to accompany him that jigs and jags in a way that the composer surely envisioned. It makes us uncomfortable, as uncomfortable as Schubert’s friends themselves testified to being the first time that Schubert, after warning them, said they would be. This is after all a piece written during the composer’s final illness, and for once the mood of the composer is reflected in the music, at least the darker side that Schubert was allowing to be displayed in its raw and irritable brilliance.
This is not a long drawn-out reading—it is slightly faster than Padmore’s overall but also moves consistently and with great deliberation, showing that Winterreise does not have to be as slow as Winter in order to be effective. The pace, while important, gives way to such considerations as intensity, color, and textual projection. Gura captures all of these elements very well and gives us a performance that ranks with the very best. I needn’t have worried about the pianoforte – this an 1872 Ronisch, is post-Schubert and therefore of a much higher quality than the composer would have used. One might ask why even go with a PF as having one 50 years older than the composer’s death defeats the purpose of authenticity. This piano does not really sound like our—or at least my—stereotyped sound image of the instrument. It is actually quite warm and full of clarity, and fits well with Gura’s voice, also burnished and often overly-lyrical in his amazing ability to phrase the long line.
So this is a real winner, knocking out the Padmore if you have to choose, and equaling many if not all of the other greats in this market. Passionately recommended!
— Steven Ritter
