The “infinity” of Schubert’s Winterreise: An Interview with Jakob Bloch Jespersen and Sharon Prushansky
BY KEN MELTZER

Bass-baritone Jakob Bloch Jespersen and fortepianist Sharon Prushansky are featured on a new Our Recordings release of Schubert’s epic song cycle, Winterreise. I spoke with the artists about their collaboration, and Schubert’s extraordinary creation.

I’m looking forward to chatting with you about your new recording of Schubert’s Winterreise! But as this is your first Fanfare interview, tell us a bit about your background and musical careers.
Sharon Prushansky: Lied literature had a very important role in my musical upbringing. I started my piano studies at the age of six, and when I was twelve I received a great opportunity - I took part in a lied accompaniment course for young pianists in Jerusalem. I had to prepare some songs from Schubert’s Schwanengesang, and during the course I worked on them with some wonderful musicians from the Israeli Opera. I was completely captivated by the music and the beauty of the German language, but mostly, this first experience of the intimate connection between a singer and a pianist was very special for me, and taught me a great deal about music making. Later in life I took a break from modern piano, and moved to Basel, Switzerland to study organ, harpsichord and fortepiano and focus on historical performance practice. These days I’m happy to play all sorts of pianos, including modern, but playing 19th century repertoire, especially lieder, on period instruments is very close to my heart.
Jakob Bloch Jespersen: I was trained as a classical singer at the Royal Academy of Music in Copenhagen followed by studies at the Opera Academy of the Royal Danish Theatre. Already during my years as a student I worked a lot with early music with Paul Hillier’s Theatre of Voices as well as with Concerto Copenhagen and Lars Ulrik Mortensen. I have had an ongoing musical relationship with both of them for more than 20 years now and have done numerous recordings of German Baroque music especially. Apart from working with 17th and 18th century music I regularly perform both opera, oratorio, and lieder as well as contemporary music. I have had a diverse career as a singer and I like to believe it has helped me stay agile both vocally and musically.
When did you begin collaborating?
SP: Our first performance together was in the Trigonale Festival in Austria in 2018. We met for the first time only a few days before the concert, and I remember how elated I felt after our first rehearsal. We played through Winterreise, and I was in awe of Jakob’s beautifully intense and sensitive interpretation. On that occasion we had a wonderful fortepiano by the Austria-based maker Robert Brown, and we were both enthusiastic about it. Luckily, when we decided to record the piece, we could once again use one of Robert’s fortepianos.
In addition to Winterreise, what other repertoire have you performed together?
JBJ: Winterreise is the first and - so far - only piece we have performed together. So, even though we have been working together for 6 years, Winterreise is the starting point of our collaboration.
In your liner notes for the Our Recordings CD, you characterize Winterreise as a work that “is regarded as an undisputed masterpiece of the Lied literature.” What are the aspects you find most compelling about Schubert’s Winterreise?
JBJ: The infinity. Winterreise is a work that keeps giving. You will never reach an absolute understanding of the piece. Every time I revisit it, I peel off another layer, and I have a feeling that this process is endless.
What are the work’s unique challenges?
JBJ: The length alone (about 70 minutes) makes Winterreise a unique challenge in terms of focus and concentration. Keeping the mental “track” throughout a performance is at the same time the biggest challenge and the greatest pleasure of working with Winterreise. Your mind will inevitably drift occasionally and you have to force yourself back into the wintery landscape. Also you will experience some element of physical fatigue during a performance. Hence I have the experience that performing Winterreise is a kind of meta-experience where you as a performer force yourself to go through a similar tour de force as the protagonist to the point of metal and physical exhaustion.
Schubert completed the song cycle Winterreise in 1827, the year prior to his death at the age of 31. When Schubert composed Winterreise, he was suffering the ravages of the disease that led to his early demise. You characterize the Wilhelm Müller poems Schubert set to music as “a study of grief.” It’s a description that I think also well applies to Schubert’s score. Do you perceive autobiographical/confessional elements in Schubert’s Winterreise?
JBJ: It’s very tempting to do so, but also a doubtful approach to the work. We still don’t know what caused Schubert’s early death, and he probably wasn’t aware that he was soon going to die when he wrote Winterreise. Having said that, all the emotions we go through during Winterreise are emotions that Schubert would have been in touch with and able to express very precisely through his refined musical language. In that sense Winterreise is indeed mirroring Schubert’s emotional life. His ability to express the basic emotional conditions of human life, such as grief, loss, alienation, solitude, etc. is the very reason why he is among the greatest composers of European classical music history.
Your recording of Winterreise was made in October, 2023. Sharon, on your YouTube channel, you included a video of the September 15, 2018 Trigonale Festival performance by you and Jakob of Winterreise. How often have you performed this work together?
SP: We have performed it together five times so far, on both historical and modern pianos in Austria, Switzerland, Germany and Denmark. Next time will be this summer in a Danish festival on the island of Bornholm in the Baltic Sea, and we’re hoping to put together a tour after the CD has been released.
Has your concept of Winterreise changed at all over time, and if so, how?
SP: I recently listened to our first performance, and was surprised to hear how different it sounded than our recent recording. I was mostly struck by how our tempi seem to have become less extreme over time: the fast songs are now a little more moderate, and some of the slow ones are more flowing. One of the main challenges this long cycle poses is creating a sense of dramatic continuity between the songs, and I feel this is something that develops with each performance. Some aspects of the interpretation can only develop through the experience of performing the cycle. Rehearsing “der Leiermann” separately can never be the same as performing it after more than one hour of music - so I’m sure our Winterreise will grow in the future after more performances, perhaps in unexpected directions.
Winterreise has been recorded numerous times, including versions by some of the greatest lied interpreters, past and present. Do you have any recordings that are particular favorites? What aspects attract you to these versions?
JBJ: I have been listening to many different recordings over the years, and there are numerous favorites among them. A special one for me is Peter Anders and Michael Raucheisen’s recording from Berlin 1945. Their approach to the music is very far from ours, but I appreciate it a lot.
When it comes to Winterreise, you can’t avoid Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau’s studio and live recordings from the 50’ies, 60’ies and 70’ies with different accompanists. His influence on our perception of lieder is enormous, even today.
Among the less iconic recordings I would like to highlight Andreas Schmidt and Rudolf Jansen’s Deutsche Grammophon recording from 1992. As a student I took summer courses with them. They were both generous and inspiring musicians, and very kind people too. I like to believe that they contributed to shape me as a lieder-singer.
A final one which now strikes me actually to relate to our musical approach to the piece is the 2014 Evil Penguin recording by our common friend Jan van Elsacker accompanied by Tom Beghin. This is a fascinating and very personal rendering of the piece that one - coming from the Dieskauian tradition - will have to get used to. But the more I listen to it, the more I appreciate it.
SP: I’d like to add to Jakob’s fantastic list a recording I personally love, of Joyce DiDonato and Yannick Nézet-Séguin from 2021. Like most people, I’m used to hearing Winterreise sung by male voices, and there are many performances I like by baritones and tenors, but when I first listened to this version, it instantly resonated with me. I find their approach to the drama of the text extremely convincing, and the richness of colours in both the voice and the piano is incredible. I also like their use of rubato, which makes this performance very organic and flowing. Their version of “das Wirtshaus” is exquisite and greatly inspired me.
The fortepiano used in this recording is a modern creation, inspired by an instrument of Schubert’s era. I was struck both by its beautiful tone quality, and the remarkable variety of sounds and colors Sharon elicits from it. Tell us about this fortepiano, and its technical capacities.
SP: We were very fortunate to work with Robert Brown’s copy of an instrument by Jakob Bertsche. The original instrument stems from an interesting period in Viennese piano making, right before a more “Romantic”, heavier sound was introduced, for instance by the pianos of Conrad Graf. Bertsche’s piano represents a highpoint of the Viennese late Classical piano making, with sound that has a slender, transparent and very “speaking” quality, which suits Schubert’s writing style very well. This piano has six octaves, and, remarkably, six pedals that can be used to change the quality and the colour of the sound.
Do you ever modify the use of the pedals in different performances of Winterreise?
SP: Of course. The pedals add some wonderful colours, and we enjoyed discovering them and playing around with the different possibilities. Schubert was very particular about dynamics in Winterreise, and meticulously specified different grades of soft dynamics, so having three different pedals that make the sound softer in different ways was a real luxury. However, we have performed this work on different pianos, among them an Erard from 1850 and a modern Steinway, and each time we both needed to adjust our interpretation to the unique possibilities offered by each piano.
In addition to exploring the sonorities of the replica period fortepiano, are there any other HIP elements (either instrumental or vocal) you consider in your approach to Winterreise?
JBJ: I’m not sure if you can speak of a historically informed approach to the piece as such, but especially with great classics like Winterreise you can easily take on habits from other artists or make up your own habits over the years. We have made an effort to avoid taking on habits by reading the score closely again and again, reminding ourselves what was Schubert’s intention: what did he actually write? Does Schubert write a fermata or a ritardando here, or is it something you heard in some recording, or a habit you obtained five performances ago?
In your essay, you pose a rhetorical question as to what happens to the narrator after the conclusion of the Winterreise narrative: “What physical form will the narrator’s existence take now?... Neither the poem nor the music offer a definitive clue, and the conclusion of the journey remains open for interpretation.” What do you think is the narrator’s fate?
JBJ: Answering our own questions would at the same time limit the work to only that one interpretation. What makes Winterreise a great and everlasting piece of art has partly to do with the fact that it’s an open work. The “narrative” of Winterreise is not an actual storyline, but rather a collection of images that collectively form some sort of blurry narrative. Actually, the images are disconnected and the connection and interpretation is only happening within the listener. I prefer keeping it open.
The recorded sound on your new Winterreise recording is superb. Tell us about the recording venue and your production team.
SP: We recorded at the Dorothea Porsche Saal of the Odeïon cultural center in Salzburg, which for us had the double advantage of having great acoustics and being very close to Robert Brown’s fortepiano workshop. Our producer is Switzerland-based Karel Valter, who has an immense experience with recordings of early music on period instruments. Robert and Karel made a wonderful team, with them we really felt we had the best conditions possible for our recording.
The booklet includes numerous photos by Tove Kurtzweil. Tell us about those photos, and how they complement the Winterreise recording.
JBJ: Tove Kurtzweil is a Danish photographer, especially recognised for her portrait photography. She lived in a huge apartment in central Copenhagen close to the royal palace, and used to rent out rooms to traveling musicians and singers visiting Copenhagen. I got to know her through colleagues of mine who stayed with her regularly. At some point I bought a wonderful portrait of Lars von Trier which she made for a magazine when his debut The Element of Crime came out in 1984. This photo is still hanging in the hallway by the kitchen at home. Tove died in 2018, and when this project came up, I thought her landscape photos could constitute a strong visual identity. I contacted Tove’s ex-boyfriend Lars Schwander who immediately suggested a series of photos Tove made in Iceland during a stay in 1995. They are all developed in a darkroom, and only exist in one copy each. With kind permission by Tove’s daughter Line and the family estate, it was made possible to use the photos for this CD, and we are very grateful for that!
The photos correspond very well with the atmosphere that Müller and Schubert describe in Winterreise, consisting of rocky and icy landscapes with seemingly abandoned villages and houses. As with Schubert, even the harshest and coldest images are portrayed with poetic sensitivity. The modern photographic aesthetics also help bring the work out of its Biedermeier origin of the early 19th century and into present-day relevance.
What future projects are in store for you, both as collaborators and individually?
JBJ: I have for a while been dreaming of exploring the treasures of early Danish art song together with Sharon on a period instrument. There are well-hidden gems among the vast number of songs by composers such as Friedrich Kuhlau, Georg Gerson, Johann Abraham Peter Schulz, and Christoph Ernst Friedrich Weyse who were the leading Danish composers of the late 18th / early 19th century. Robert Brown, who built the fortepiano we used for the Winterreise recording, has another excellent original “Mozartian” instrument in his workshop that would suit this repertoire perfectly. My hope is that we could build up a project around that repertoire on that particular instrument.