Hans Zender’s 1993 “composed interpretation” of Schubert’s Winterreise is really interesting.  It’s scored for tenor and a twenty-five piece ensemble including accordion, guitar, loads of percussion and a wind machine.  It’s also over eighty minutes long with the additional material being mainly intros and outros.  A new recording by Allan Clayton with the Aurora Orchestra conducted by Nicholas Conlon has just been released.  It’s fascinating.

I’m just going to pick up on a few of the tracks to try and give a flavour of what’s going on.  It all starts with “Gute Nacht”.  Here the singing doesn’t start until almost the four minute mark after an intro including a lot of extended technique for the strings.  To begin with, the singing is extremely beautiful and few singers do “beautiful” better than Clayton, then around the six minute mark it goes wild with accordion coming in and Clayton “uglifying” his voice for a minute or so before a more conventional ending. Continue reading →