Love, tears and transience   Schöne Müllerin • These Fevered Days

It is no easy task for a 21st century composer to reinterpret a classic. At the suggestion of the noted Schubert interpreter Christoph Prégardien, Johannes Maria Staud has accepted the challenge. The Austrian composer has orchestrated Schubert’s song cycle Die Schöne Müllerin (1823) for a 19-strong ensemble and combined it with seven of his own songs based on poems by Emily Dickinson (1830-1886). Staud interweaves the two strands, creating a new interpretation of this timeless theme. He remains very close to the original, adding the female view through Dickinson’s poems. In her late work, Staud has found wonderful laconic poems that integrate perfectly with the world of Die Schöne Müllerin – complementing and expanding it, but also contradicting it and ironically questioning its romanticised view of nature – and offering a radically feminine perspective.

Christoph Prégardien – tenor
Klangforum Wien
Dir: Elena Schwarz