Tenor vocalist Stanley Workman and pianist Edward Bak performed Franz Shubert’s “Winterreise” Thursday, Feb. 5, hosted by Marshall’s School of Music.
According to the program, Shubert began composing the song cycle in February 1827, basing it on a collection of poems by Wilhelm Muller.
The collection tells the story of a man who is cast out from his lover’s home during the winter in favor of a more financially-gifted suitor and his experience with loneliness and betrayal.
Workman is the artistic director of the Verne Riffe Center at Shawnee State University and holds a doctorate in musical arts from Ohio State University. Bak has an active career as a vocal coach and pianist and has been referred to by the international press as “a pianist who knows how to combine fury and restraint, elegance and lyrical effusion.”
“I think it’s good to hear voices that aren’t from around here because [it] gives us a point of view that’s more like what it’ll be like in the real world,” said Gracie Davis, sophomore music education major, when asked how beneficial performances like these are to her education.
Davis went on to say she enjoyed how the piano aided the voice in telling the story of the cycle. She also felt the piece makes comments on aging, saying the piece only works from the perspective of an older person, adding she had a discussion with her professor about the theme of what Davis called a “mid-life crisis.”
At the time he composed “Winterreise,” Shubert was dying of syphilis, a disease he contracted in the summer of 1822. He had been treating the disease with mercury that, while the norm at the time, was also responsible for the symptoms he began to display in the time before his death.
During the lucid moments on his deathbed, Shubert would read “The Last of the Mohicans” and make final corrections to the second part of “Winterreise.”
“I’ve never really heard this specific collection of pieces before, but Shubert is a very well known name,” said Allison Jeffery, concert attendee and former music major. “I know a lot of my peers who are still music majors enjoy a lot of Schubert’s work.”
Some attendees of the concert said they walked away from the performance with a better understanding of the piece and seeing the piece performed by such accomplished musicians and vocalists benefitted their music education.
“I think it also draws me in for concerts like this one, specifically, where people outside the university are coming to visit and do this showcase for us,” Jeffery said. “It is amazing to be able to see all these professionals, especially for free, because they are here purely for their love of education.”
Caitlyn Thompson can be contacted at [email protected]
