Schubert: Winterreise (Barytone & String Quartet)

Far from being prejudicial to the work's integrity, a transcription of Winterreise for voice and string quartet follows a tradition that enabled the music of Schubert, from 1830, to spread throughout the whole of Europe. The lieder in particular were the object of the most diverse adaptations, with the voice replaced by a cello, a violin, a horn or even a cornet, and the piano part at times orchestrated. Such an approach is therefore perfectly "authentic", even if the juxtaposition of a string quartet and the lied is not the easiest to deal with; the first indeed embodies a noble genre, scholarly, elaborate in style, stylistically complex, whereas the second remains attached to its popular origins and to a simplicity in both the vocal part and the accompaniment.