This Winterreise ends Matthias Goerne’s series of Schubert lieder recordings. Here everything is tenser, more urgent, more harrowing. At once backdrop and metaphor for a soul chilled by the ineluctable, this winter landscape expects no spring to come. Nor will the Hurdy-Gurdy Man give any answer. In the intimate atmosphere offered by a recording, still more than in concert, this path to oblivion finds its echo in our innermost selves.
