Concert: Soprano Daniela Bechly and pianist George Ireland performed Schubert's famous song cycle “Winterreise” in the Capella Hospitalis

by Antje Doßmann

Bielefeld.

Since her opera debut in 1983 in Braunschweig and various subsequent

engagements in German, Irish and British venues, soprano Daniela

Bechly can look back on a successful singing career.

Emphasizing certain interests in her repertoire is a special feature of the

Hamburg-born singer, who has lived in Great Britain for many years.

Since 2008, she is also the director of the Pimlott Foundation, which is

dedicated to the promotion of young artists. Both aspects of her career

enabled the brilliant performer to unite in a performance at the Capella

Hospitalis in a way that delighted the audience.

Carefully accompanied by scholarship holder George Ireland, who is

currently completing his masters degree in piano accompaniment at the

Royal College of Music in London, she penetrated with great intuition

and mature skill the emotional depths of Schubert’s “Winterreise”.

Both artists broke new ground with their interpretation of the 24 songs

that the composer published in 1827, a year before his death just 31

years old. Those present experienced how the singer and pianist

explored this dark and powerful cycle. Two people had captured a

timeless significant masterpiece entirely in its core, they had not only

the musical class, but also the inner relationship to interpret the

“Winterreise” movingly. So full and bright, sparkling and clear, Daniela

Bechly’s lyrical soprano rose in the opening song “Gute Nacht”, that the

famous lines “Fremd bin ich eingezogen, fremd zieh ich wieder aus”

appeared for a moment almost too big for the intimate space of the

Kapella.

The collected, completely unpretentious arresting presence of the

singer, who had felt a need to briefly report on her own process of

approach to the song cycle, protected the concert from lopsidedness.

Instead it brought the great enjoyment of a little Schubertiad. From song

to song an understanding grew of what often is underestimated, the

resistance the romantic heritage still possesses. Schubert and Wilhelm

Müller's short lives both were overshadowed by disastrous love affairs;

the poems of the “Winterreise” may have been superficially based on

natural-lyric winter moods, but behind them is a defiant and certain political understanding: “And yet!”. 

“If the snow flies into my face, I'll shake it off” is not without reason in “Mut”.

Today we hear Müller’s strong lyrics, Schubert’s poignant melodies and

prepare ourselves against the cold. Winter, we know, is a synonym.