ED2016 4/5 Reviews ED2016 Music Reviews

Hans Zender’s Wintereisse (Hebrides Ensemble in Greyfriars Kirk / Edinburgh International Festival)

By | Published on Saturday 27 August 2016

Hans Zender's Winterreise Ed2016

This was Schubert’s Romantic song cycle, of lost love and subsequent decline into illness and vagrancy, reimagined for orchestra and tenor. It’s interestingly written– including wind machines, rasping brass and a string quartet. What I took from this well performed and staged version was not that it told me more about the hero than the original lieder but that it told me – through the musical styles used – a lot about Germany, where it is set. At times it seemed like a musical cartoon, everything explained loudly and endlessly by the orchestral score, with no room for the listener to use their imagination. But that’s not the Hebrides Ensemble or Christian Elsner’s fault, and to them I say “Bravo”.

Greyfriars Kirk, 24 Aug.
tw rating 4/5 | [Louise Rodgers]



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