Winter & Winter conceives a canon of the most extraordinary piano works of world literature performed by the unique French artist Jean-Pierre Collot. After Hans Abrahamsen's ‘Snow’, the album ‘Universe’ (Claude Debussy in dialogue with Salvatore Sciarrino), ‘Espaces imaginaires’ (with premiere recordings of Jean Barraqué's masterpieces), now the Goethe texts Restless Love, An Schwager Kronos, Meeresstille, Erlkönig and Gretchen am Spinnrade inspire the composers Hugues Dufourt and Schubert/Liszt to dedicate themselves to Sturm und Drang (storm and stress), a German movement of the late 18th century that exalted nature, feeling, and human individualism and sought to overthrow the Enlightenment cult of Rationalism. Goethe and Schiller began their careers as prominent members of the movement.

‘Why did I choose An Schwager Kronos to begin with? On the one hand because the world of Sturm und Drang interested me, Goethe of course. There was the reference to Schubert, and I always found Schubert's choices brilliant, especially in his relationship to Goethe's poetry … Everything starts with Goethe anyway. Goethe shaped perhaps the most eminent period in the history of European culture. Goethe shifts the view of things in cultural matters, in the sense that his poetry ends up giving more importance to geological times than to historical times. Goethe thus introduces something unique, absolutely singular, once again, which is this instantaneous perception in the most fleeting moment, this perception of the millennia underlying this landscape he is contemplating. This awareness has changed I think the nature of music, German and Austrian music in particular …’ – Hugues Dufourt