William Kentridge is a true renaissance man: a designer, fine artist, filmmaker, and stage director. His creations are exhibited and performed around the globe in the world's most prestigious museums and festivals. Fascinated by the relationship between sound and image, he presented a video project at the 2014 Aix-en-Provence Festival inspired by Schubert's Winterreise, a cycle of lieder based on texts by the Romantic poet Wilhelm Müller. As described by Bernard Foccroulle, Directeur General of the Aix-en-Provence Festival, "Everyday objects, winter countrysides, solitary individuals, memories, and amorous encounters, birds in flight, funeral processions, Kentridge's universe seems to be in natural resonance with Müller's poems."
Matthias Goerne is one of today's most eminent specialists of Schubert's Lieder. His discography testifies to the fact: beginning in 1997 with Goethe Lieder and leading to Wanderers Nachtlied in 2014, with the albums Die Schöne Müllerin, Winterreise, Schwanengesang, Sehnsucht, An Mein Herz, and many others in between, Goerne's baritone voice seems to draw its life force from Schubert. Seen performing here alongside Austrian pianist Markus Hinterhäuser (director of the Wiener Festwochen and future director of the Salzburger Festspiele), Goerne is, without doubt, the ideal guest artist for Winterreise. Their production of Winterreise went on to tour the world, with a celebrated performance at Alice Tully Hall in New York in November 2014.
Picture: Festival d’Aix-en-Provence 2014 © Patrick Berger/ArtcomArt
