Winterreis

Far from being harmful to the integrity of the work, a transcription of Winterreise for voice and string quartet follows a tradition that enabled Schubert's music, from 1830 onwards, to spread throughout Europe. It was especially the songs that were the subject of the most varied arrangements, with the voice being replaced by a cello, a violin, a horn or even a cornet, and the piano part sometimes being orchestrated. Such an approach is therefore completely "authentic", even if the juxtaposition of a string quartet and the song is not the easiest to deal with; the former indeed embodies a noble genre, scholarly, expansive in style, stylistically complex, while the latter remains attached to its popular origins and to a simplicity in both the vocal part and the accompaniment. In this transcription by Gilone Gaubert, however, the gamble has paid off and a new colour has been given to Schubert's absolute masterpiece. The transition from piano to strings implies not only a change of timbre: if the percussive quality of the keyboard is lost, it is not only to the benefit of the ability to sustain a note, but also to vary its colour and intensity throughout its duration, resulting in very different phrasings and effects. It is thus a transformed expressivity that accompanies this transcription, as well as a modification of the overall resonance. The warm, clear voice of baritone Alain Buet, accompanied by the quartet Les Heures du jour, invites you to delve into this world premiere in a rediscovery of undoubtedly the most accomplished cycle in the song repertoire.