Tales from the Stave

BBC Radio 4 LW

Original version

BBC Radio 4 FM

BBC Radio 4 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced BBC Home Service.

BBC Radio 4

Radio 4

Radio 4 (FM)

Documentaries

Music: Classical

Series that tracks down the stories behind the scores of well-known pieces of music

Tales from the Stave: Schubert's Winterreise

Schubert's Winterreise

BBC Radio 4 - Tales from the Stave, Schubert's Winterreise

A celebration of the working manuscript of Franz Schubert's final song cycle Winterreise.

Clemency Burton Hill is joined, at the Morgan Library in New York, by the tenor Rufus Muller to explore the working manuscripts of Franz Schubert's great song cycle Winterreise.

One of the greatest treasures in New York's Morgan Library collection, and indeed in any collection of music manuscripts anywhere in the world, is the handwritten working manuscripts of Franz Schubert's great and final song cycle Winterreise.  Composed in 1827, the last year of his life, it describes a poet's journey through winter snows after being rejected by his lover.  However the gathering darkness and the searching introspection make it a far more compelling experience for audiences, including those who heard it first, played and sung by the composer himself shortly before his death, than that simple precis suggests.
This edition of Tales from the Stave was recorded well before Covid 19 brought the closure of museums and libraries and so Clemency Burton Hill was joined at The Morgan by the tenor Rufus Muller and the pianist Inon Banatan as well as the scholar Marjorie Hirsch.  What they reveal is the striving of a composer with a huge capacity for melodic brilliance matched here by a desire to make the poetry by Wilhelm Muller tell in every line. There are times when it appears to flow easily and others when there's a tortured sense of a man in a hurry.  That, of course, is a reality.  He had been diagnosed with syphilis and although he didn't suffer the ignominies that disease brought to many, his end coming swiftly, he was acutely aware that these songs would be amongst his last.

Producer, Tom Alban

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

Accessibility links

Programme Index

Tales from the Stave

Schubert's Winterreise

Genres

Brand

BBC Radio 4 FM

About BBC Radio 4