In his groundbreaking Lieder cycle Winterreise, Franz Schubert brought to the fore the dark side of the yearning for happiness that channels into obsessions, fears, a sense of danger, feelings of forlornness, bleakness and exposure in hitherto unknown dimensions and with a sense of urgency.

His songs for instruments can be viewed as the dissolution of Classical genre boundaries. Repetitions that create, rather like pauses, both stasis and endlessness, facilitate the present as both an experience and a consolidation of existence. Something that initially one can barely imagine soon develops into an addictive nature: we begin to understand this aural picture even without the singing – a true work of art. A kind of intellectual sorrow pervades the richly varied treatment. Attacca! As in Beethoven’s op.131, there are no breaks between the pieces. Specially composed Intermezzi create bridges between the songs and simultaneously distance themselves from them.