Winterreise
$32.00
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SCHUBERT
Winterreise
Peter Harvey (baritone) Gary Cooper (piano)
[ Linn SACD / Hybrid SACD ]
Release Date: Monday 8 November 2010
This item is currently out of stock. It may take 6 or more weeks to obtain from when you place your order as this is a specialist product.
Peter Harvey delivers a unique recording of Schubert's popular song-cycle Winterreise which, alongside Die Schone Mullerin, provides one of the greatest challenges in the lieder repertoire.
Harvey's historically informed interpretation is further enhanced by Gary Cooper who performs on an early 19th century fortepiano. This collaborative attention to authenticity creates the atmospheric and distinctive sound world that Schubert intended.
Peter Harvey leads the listener on an intense, dramatic journey; his expressive baritone perfectly captures the bleak emotions of the wanderer in this beautiful work.
Peter Harvey has made around a hundred recordings in repertoire spanning eight centuries and has performed with The King's Consort, The Sixteen, and Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment at festivals and venues throughout the UK including Wigmore Hall, Bridgewater Hall, The Sage and Barbican.
Harvey has won prizes in a number of international singing competitions, including the Walther Grüner International Lieder Competition and the English Song Award.
Gary Cooper is one of the foremost ambassadors of the fortepiano and of period performance in general. He has received countless awards and worldwide acclaim for his recordings with Rachel Podger.
"his reading is extremely fine, because he bases it on the same principles he has learnt and practised as an exemplar of "historical performance".[He brings] evenness and purity of tone - no quasi-operatic expressionism here - and a precise but natural understanding of Schubert's musical syntax. The youthful freshness of experience described in these songs comes across powerfully" (Financial Times)
"Harvey here joins the ranks of British singers communicating fresh ideas about Schubert's great song cycle. The performance bristles with musical intelligence, historical sensibility and linguistic expertise...The keyboard colour, without the usual "equal temperament" tuning, is light-toned and full of rapid contrasts - an ideal match for Harvey's voice." (The Observer)
"Harvey's intelligent sensitivity to the words of Müller's poems makes this an unusually thoughtful Winterreise, as if the rejected lover were gradually realizing, as he plods across the winter landscape, the depths of his despair...Accompanying these icy songs, Cooper's fortepiano sounds chillingly bleak." (International Record Review)
"a performance which arouses sympathy from the start and never forfeits that rare and special kind of interest which is brought into play only with a sense of complete and urgent identification between the composition and its performers...Moreover (and this is important even in this realm of high art), Peter Harvey sings with the voice of humanity." (Gramophone)
