Franz Schubert’s great song cycle Winterreise, which Ian Bostridge will perform April 23 at the Lobero Theatre, is, in the words of the acclaimed tenor, “The first and greatest of concept albums.”
That may sound a little glib. But in the book Schubert’s Winter Journey: Anatomy of an Obsession, Bostridge’s rich, fact-packed exploration of the piece, its cultural and historical roots, and the countless ways it reverberates, the singer turned author makes a strong argument for the continued modernity of the 70-minute masterpiece. His book, just published in January by Knopf, could have been titled Schubert, Our Contemporary.
Did you think stripping down a story to its bare essentials, leaving the audience to string together its ambiguous pieces, was the invention of experimental novelists or filmmakers? Schubert, in adapting a set of 24 poems by Wilhelm Müller, was doing just that nearly 200 years ago.