Schubert’s Winter Journey: Anatomy of an Obsession by Ian Bostridge (review)

Schubert is a hell of a drug. There is something about his writing, a sort of all-consuming enchantment that, once in the ear, dominates all the other senses and demands unremitting focus. His music conjures and represents a wide array of emotions, but in it there is almost always a sense of longing, of nostalgia, of regret, or of hope, so strong that a listener cannot help but be pulled willingly into the experience of the music as all else falls away.

Other composers achieve equally captivating power, to be sure: the string quartets of Shostakovich, for instance, have their own riveting effect, driven often by a terrifying violence that commands the hearer to pay attention—or else.

What Schubert offers us instead of fearful thrill is rapture—the loving embrace of the String Quintet, the cooing tenderness of the “Wiegenlied,” the irrepressible joy of the Ninth Symphony. Even in his chilliest moments, Schubert can have a soothingly hypnotic effect: listen to his “Der Tod und das Mädchen” and see if the temperature in the room doesn’t drop by ten degrees when Death offers his hand to the frightened young maiden. Yet, as the song finishes and the shade’s imposing chords resound once more, now in major mode, accepting the peace of eternal rest doesn’t seem like such a horrible idea after all.

Of all the genres in which Schubert labored (and he succeeded at several), nowhere was his genius more apparent than in his lieder. Before Schubert, art song had never gained much notice from the great composers as a serious genre, and after him all of the great composers who devoted themselves to song have stood in his shadow, no matter how tall. The legacy that he left is astonishing, taking texts by towering poets such as Goethe, Müller, Schiller, and Heine and setting them to such sublime music that it is difficult now to imagine the poems on their own.

For the last two decades or so, the English tenor Ian Bostridge has been among our foremost interpreters of the German song repertoire. Bostridge, as even many of his admirers have observed, does not have the most naturally beautiful voice in the world. His instrument is extremely light, cool in color, and somewhat hard on the edge, so that he generally does not lavish his songs with the honeyed tone that we expect from most trained singers. But the artistry with which he approaches the song repertoire elevates his performances to a level few others can touch. It’s hard to think of many other active singers who bring to their lieder anything approaching Bostridge’s level of emotional and poetic understanding. Matthias Goerne springs to mind. Maybe Mark Padmore?

In fact, the imperfections of Bostridge’s voice (such as they are) in some ways enhance the intimate quality of the repertoire that is his specialty. In recent years we in the United States have grown used to hearing lieder recitals in large halls like the 2,800-seat Stern Auditorium at Carnegie Hall. A performance in Lincoln Center’s 1,000-seat Alice Tully Hall seems positively cozy by comparison. Big names draw big crowds, and in order to hear the very best artists interpret the very best works, one has to be willing to share the experience with a brigade of fellow admirers.

But art song shares its roots with chamber music as a genre that was born of a social and informal performance tradition. These works had their first hearings in living rooms, often played or sung by accomplished amateurs (Schubert was himself no great shakes as a singer, and he wrote a simplified version of the fiendish accompaniment to Der Erlkönig for his own use). Bostridge is more than that, to be sure, but where a Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau fits and adapts to the music like a cheveril glove, one hears in Bostridge’s singing a hint of struggle between his voice...