Sunday Afternoon at the Opera - Schubert: Winterreise; Stravinsky: Oedipus Rex

Sunday Afternoon at the Opera host Keith Brown writes:

Lyric theater programming for 2016 begins with two back-to-back musical tragedies. Franz Schubert's song cycle Winterreise ("Winter Journey,"1827) is the most touching of stories about unrequited love. The story is told through the short lyrical poems of Wilhelm Mueller. The despair of the winter traveler ultimately drives him to madness.

I have broadcast recordings of Winterreise regularly over the years sometime during the winter season. Many of the great male singers of the twentieth century have recorded the complete song cycle. The greatest lieder singer of the twentieth century, German baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (1925-2012) recorded it several times over his long singing career.

Now in the twenty first century German tenor Jonas Kaufmann (b. 1969) has essayed Winterreise. He has already made a name for himself on the operatic stage. Kaufmann has given Winterreise a decidedly non-operatic interpretation. He does not bellow out the lyrics. His approach is vocally subdued, intimate, and introspective, as if he wants to convey to the listener what's going on in the winter traveler's mind in the very moment of thought. In Kaufmann's own words, Winterreise should be"...an emotional experience which purges the soul." Jonas Kaufmann recorded Winterreise in 2013 with pianist Helmut Deutsch accompanying him. A 2014 Sony Classical release on a single silver disc.

We then go back to one of Western civilization's primal tragedies, the ancient Greek story of murder and incest revolving around the figure of King Oedipus. Igor Stravinsky was drawn to the Oedipus myth as handed down to us by the playwright Sophocles. In composing his opera/oratorio Oedipus Rex (1927) Stravinsky wanted to do it in a "dead" classical tongue- Latin, the language of Seneca, the Roman tragedian who adapted Sophocles' original drama. Stravinsky's severely neoclassical style perfectly suits the Latin libretto that his French contemporary Jean Cocteau prepared for him. Although it lasts a little less than an hour in performance, Oedipus Rex is truly monumental in conception, like a veritable Parthenon built in sound. It is arguably Stravinsky's finest summary theatrical composition, taking in baroque and classical operatic traditions, plus spoken word narration.

I've broadcast Oedipus Rex twice before in the grim dead of winter, in January of 1993 and again in January, 2006. There's actually a fair number of recordings this work in circulation. The latest one to come into my hands is the one the London Symphony Orchestra made live in concert at their usual venue, the Barbican Hall in London, in the spring of 2013. Sir John Eliot Gardiner conducts the LSO, the Monteverdi Choir, and a cast of British vocal singers. The recording was issued through the orchestra's own LSO Live label in 2014.