Staud's Schöne Müllerin with Christoph Prégardien in Innsbruck, Porto…

On 14 September, Christoph Prégardien performed Johannes Maria Staud's newly orchestrated ensemble version of Schubert's cycle Die Schöne Müllerin with Klangforum Wien in Innsbruck. Entitled These Fevered Days, it is interwoven with seven new songs based on poems by Emily Dickinson. The work will also be performed in Porto and Vienna in the near future.

Together with the ensemble KONTRASTE under the direction of Gregor A. Mayrhofer, the acclaimed Lied interpreter Christoph Prégardien successfully launched Die Schöne Müllerin/These Fevered Days at the start of the last season in the Tafelhalle Nuremberg.

Now the work can be heard again on several occasions: as part of the Klangspuren Schwaz festival, it was performed at the Haus der Musik Innsbruck on 14 September to mark the 40th anniversary of Klangforum Wien. Conducted by Elena Schwarz, Klangforum will perform Die Schöne Müllerin/These Fevered Days again on 11 December at the Wiener Konzerthaus.

Between these two performances, the work can also be heard in Porto. There, it will be performed by the Remix Ensemble under the baton of Peter Rundel on 14 October.

For his new work, Johannes Maria Staud has orchestrated Schubert's song cycle, written 200 years ago, for a 19-piece ensemble and added his own songs. A completely different lyrical voice speaks from these: Emily Dickinson's artful and radically modern texts were written a few decades after those of Wilhelm Müller on the other side of the Atlantic.

Johannes Maria Staud explains his composition, written at the suggestion of Christoph Prégardien: "The two strands are intertwined and naturally lead to a new interpretation of this timeless and enduring subject matter. Of course, one might immediately think of Hans Zender's “compositional interpretation” of the Winterreise from 1993. However, as much as I admire that work, my approach is quite different. With my instrumentation of the 20 Schubert songs in the cycle, I bring Schubert’s vibrant melodies and inventiveness into the present – very close to the original text. A misunderstood historicity would make little sense here. My own songs, obviously composed in a completely different tonal language, function as a deliberate counterpoint, as a commentary from the here and now, and as the work proceeds, they merge with Schubert's cycle on a superordinate level. From the perspective of the Müllerin, who in Schubert/Müller remains merely a projection screen for male desire, I thus take a new look at the narratives of Schubert’s songs reflected by nature: wandering – strangeness – desire – unrequited love – suicide."

Die Schöne Müllerin/These Fevered Days @ Breitkopf & Härtel (publisher)

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