An Interpretation Issue in the Slow Movement of Mozart's String Quintet K. 516

Mozart's String Quintet in G minor, K. 516 is one of the greatest pieces of chamber music ever written. Its slow movement in E flat major has been described by Alfred Einstein as "the prayer of Jesus while the apostles are asleep". On 16 March 1878, concerning the Adagio ma non troppo of this quintet, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky wrote the following to his patron Nadezhda von Mec.

In his chamber music, Mozart charms me with his purity and distinction of style and his exquisite handling of the parts. Here, too, are things which can bring tears to our eyes. I will only mention the adagio of the D [sic] minor string quintet. No one else has ever known as well how to interpret so exquisitely in music the sense of resigned and inconsolable sorrow. Every time Laub played the adagio, I had to hide in the farthest corner of the concert hall, so that others might not see how deeply this music affected me. [...] Previously I had only known the Italian Opera. It is thanks to Mozart that I have devoted my life to music. All these things have probably played a part in my exclusive love for him―and perhaps it is foolish of me to expect those who are dear to me to feel towards Mozart as I do. But if I could do anything to change your opinion―it would make me very happy. If ever you tell me that you have been touched by the adagio of the D minor quintet I shall rejoice.

The manuscript of K. 516, which today is held by the Biblioteka Jagiellońska in Kraków (Pl-Kj, Mus. ms. autogr. W. A. Mozart 516), is not completely written in Mozart's hand. Four leaves (folios 9, 10, 19 and 20) have been replaced with a copy written by Mozart's friend and pupil Franz Jakob Freystädtler, a fact that was first revealed in my article "Franz Jakob Freystädtler. Neue Forschungsergebnisse zu seiner Biographie und seinen Spuren im Werk Mozarts", in: Acta Mozartiana 44, vol. 3/4 (1997), 85-108. In the foreword of the pocket score of K. 516 (Taschenpartitur 159), which in 2001 was published by Bärenreiter, Manfred Hermann Schmid (then a subscriber of Acta Mozartiana) did not cite my article, but presented the information concerning Freystädtler's copying in the manuscript of K. 516 as if he had discovered it himself. In the NMA's critical report, published in 2003, Schmid repeated this plagiarism and clumsily tried to cover it up by only referring to the foreword of his own earlier edition of the Bärenreiter pocket score. When in 2005, in the second edition of this Bärenreiter score, he ignored my article for the third time, I submitted a formal protest to the management of Bärenreiter and requested an apology. Schmid did not even think of apologizing, and the excuse he presented was so lame that it made his behavior look even worse. He claimed that the information concerning Freystädtler's copying "had come from Ms. Ferguson of the NMA". Apart from the fact that it had been myself who in the summer of 1997, at the then NMA office in Salzburg, had told Faye Ferguson about Freystädtler's copying, Schmid hereby admitted that in his critical report, vital information concerning the autograph of K. 516, was not based on bibliographical research, but on hearsay and unverified verbal communication. Schmid also asked me to share information concerning some details he had overlooked in his report, but, for obvious reasons, I decided not to tell him anything about my research.

There must be space here to briefly shed light on Manfred Hermann Schmid's curious working method in editing K. 516 for the NMA. In the cello part in the Adagio ma non troppo, Schmid transcribed the second half of bar 18 as follows.

The second half of bar 18 of the cello part in the Adagio ma non troppo (in Freystädtler's hand) on p. 52 of Pl-Kj, Mus. ms. autogr. W. A. Mozart 516. Below is the same passage in the NMA as edited by Schmid.

How the "fort[e]" mark became a "sf[orzando]" in the NMA, is a mystery. In his 2003 critical report (Kritische Berichte, Serie VIII, Werkgruppe 19, Abteilung 1, 58), Schmid writes the following about the volume signs in this bar of the cello part: "p bereits zur 2. 16tel-Note" (p[iano] already at the second 1/16 note). If we look at the musical text in the manuscript, this remark makes absolutely no sense. There is no piano sign at the second 1/16 note. It turns out that what Schmid is describing is not the manuscript of K. 516 in Kraków, but the flawed edition of the AMA (Alte Mozart Ausgabe) from 1883!

The second half of bar 18 of the cello part in the Adagio in the Alte Mozart Ausgabe of 1883 which has the "p already at the second 1/16 note" (Mozarts Werke, Serie XIII, Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1883. Plate W.A.M. 516, 12)

Freystädtler's copywork on folios 9 and 10 of the manuscript consists of bars 86-90 of the Trio of the Menuetto and bars 1-65 of the Adagio. In 1956, the original two leaves of the manuscript – according to Ernst Fritz Schmid  – were allegedly held by the Collection Pleyel in Paris. They supposedly had come from the estate of Johann Anton André who, in 1800, had received them from Constanze Mozart. It seems, however, that Schmid never was able to personally scrutinize this autograph fragment and in his article "Neue Quellen zu Werken Mozarts", Mozart-Jahrbuch 1956 (Salzburg 1957), he had to base his elaboration on a microfilm of this source whose original turned out to be unaccessible to Alan Tyson and the NMA. The original leaves, which allegedly once were held by the Collection Pleyel in Paris, now cannot be located anymore. According to information, retrieved in 2015 by violist Steve Machtinger from librarian François-Pierre Goy, they were never in the possession of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. In the autograph of K. 516 Freystädtler's handwriting begins on folio 9r with the last five bars of the trio and ends at first leaf 11r, where at bar 66 of the Adagio, Mozart's handwriting sets in again. Freystädtler inserted another six bars in the fourth movement. Mozart had already begun the Allegro on folio 12v, when he realized that on 12r there was not enough space for the ending of the Adagio introduction. Beginning at bar 33, Freystädtler by hand extended  the notation system by three bars. Next to the lowest stave he wrote "vide 0 13" and added the remaining three bars at the end of the third movement on folio 11v (i.e. the previous page). There, on the right margin of the page, he wrote "Volta sub[ito] 6/8 pag 14", referring to the beginning of the fourth movement. The foliation of the leaves copied by him is also written in Freystädtler's hand, and so are the last 16 bars of the fourth movement. The original leaf of this ending once belonged to Clifford Curzon and was sold at Christie's after 1982.

The nine bars, presenting the Adagio's second theme in B flat major (which is related to the upward figure in bars 32ff. of the first movement), are usually performed as follows:

Alban Berg Quartett (with Markus Wolf) (1987): K. 516, 3rd movement, bars 24-33

Bars 24-36 of the Adagio ma non troppo of K. 516 in Ernst Hess's and Ernst Fritz Schmid's 1967 edition for the NMA (VIII/19/Abt. 1, p. 77)

The Nash Ensemble's 2010 recording presents a similar (albeit slightly faster) interpretation of this passage.

The Nash Ensemble (2010): K. 516, 3rd movement, bars 24-33

The musical detail deserving special attention in the above passage is the upward phrase in the first violin in bar 27 which is subject of a downward sequence in the following bars and is then answered by the first viola:

Bars 27-32 of the first violin in the Adagio ma non troppo of K. 516 (NMA)

Bars 27-28 of the first violin in the Adagio of K. 516 (NMA)

There are three slurs in the first half of bar 27. The second one, which connects the quarter note d''' to the following dotted sixteenth, is usually played as a long note on one stroke, as if Mozart had written a quarter note with three dots. This is obviously not how Mozart wanted this passage to be executed. The second slur is a score notation, not a performance notation. The separate third slur in bar 27 means that the quarter and the dotted sixteenth d''' ought to be separated from the preceeding quarter by a stop of the bow. Every classically trained string player should realize this. Analogous to this passage, the third slur in the next bar also demands a separation of the quarter and the following dotted sixteenth. This is what Mozart had in mind when he applied a distinct third slur.

Bars 25-31 of the Adagio ma non troppo in Mozart's autograph (formerly [allegedly] in F-Pn, Collection Pleyel)

Bars 16-31 of the Adagio ma non troppo in Freystädtler's handwriting on fol. 9v of the manuscript of K. 516 (P-Kj, Mus. ms. autogr. W. A. Mozart 516)

In bar 27 of the first violin part, Freystädtler's copy omits the second slur which is obviously an oversight.

Bars 27-28 of the first violin part in the Adagio (fol. 9v) in the handwriting of Franz Jakob Freystädtler whose copy replaced a missing part of the autograph. In bar 28, Freystädtler erroneously wrote two e'''s and a d''' which he corrected with three small letters into c''' and b'''.

The perceptible distinction between the two notes – instead of the long maudlin single note that is usually played – should also be applied in the three analogous passages in the parts of the first violin (bars 66f. in the recapitulation) and the first viola (bars 30f. and 69f.).

Bars 66 and 67 in the violins of the Adagio of K. 516 (P-Kj, Mus. ms. autogr. W. A. Mozart 516, fol. 11r). After the four pages, which were copied by Freystädtler, Mozart's handwriting begins again with this passage in bar 66.

Played this way, the two-bar-sequence suddenly acquires a different and much more logical rhetoric whose gesture homogenously corresponds with the series of similar upward figures in bars 30 and 31. Some  editions of K. 516 actually follow this different reading. For example, Johann André's edition from 1825 (plate no. 4793).

In the repeat of the second theme, André's 1825 edition surprisingly has no slurs in the second upward figure in the first violin and the first viola which means that the slur was obviously considered to have no effect at all on the bowing of this phrase.

Bars 65-73 of the Adagio in André's 1825 edition with an unexpected second slur in the violin in bar 67 and a second one in the viola in bar 71

In his pocket score edition for Eulenburg (E. E. 1113), Rudolf Gerber quite naturally relied on André's edition and did not apply a second slur in bar 27 (and 66) of the first violin part (and in the analogous passages in the first viola). It seems to have been quite obvious to Gerber how this passage should be executed.

Bars 25-31 of the Adagio on p. 24 in Rudolf Gerber's edition for Eulenburg. Note that Mozart's "mfp" is turned into into "sfp".

Arthur Grumiaux, who in 1972 recorded K. 516 for Philips, realized that in bars 27 and 28 (and the analogous passages) the third note has to be audibly separated from the second one. Grumiaux (and Georges Janzer on first viola) achieved this by reducing the bow pressure after the quarter notes in bars 27 and 28 respectively.

Grumiaux Trio with Arpad Gérecz and Max Lesueur (1972): K. 516, 3rd movement, bars 24-33

When the original LP was released in 1973, no critic noticed this important detail. I know of only one recording of the quintet K. 516 that dares to follow the composer's true intention. In December 1991, the British chamber ensemble Hausmusik, led by violinist Monica Huggett, recorded the quintets K. 515 and 516 for EMI Classics. The CD was released in 1992.

Monica Huggett and Roger Chase, who, according to the booklet of the recording, used the Neue Mozart Ausgabe, play the aforementioned two bar phrase in the Adagio as it is printed in André's 1825 edition.

Hausmusik (1991): K. 516, 3rd movement, bars 24-33

The repeat in E flat major in bars 61-71 is played analogously.

Hausmusik (1991): K. 516, 3rd movement, bars 61-71

Bars 61-73 of the Adagio in the NMA

Hausmusik's complete recording of K. 516 is available here on YouTube (the ridiculous "Mozart portrait" must be ignored). In spite of slight intonation problems, Hausmusik's performance of the third movement of K. 516 fundamentally changes the quality of a classic "beautiful Mozart passage". The correct interpretation of the second theme in the Adagio is, in my opinion, so much better and more logical that it completely changes the listening experience and makes the traditional (wrong) version completely unacceptable.

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Postscript (November 2016)

I have recently become aware of the recording of K. 516 by the Budapest String Quartet with Walter Trampler on second viola which was released in 1957, on the Columbia Masterworks Records label (ML 5192). The musicians performing on this recording were Joseph Roisman, Alexander Schneider, Boris Kroyt, Mischa Schneider and Walter Trampler.

This recording is an early document of the third movement of K. 516 being performed as it is written in the score: with the third note in bars 27 and 28 (and the analogous passages) audibly separated from the second one.

Budapest String Quartet (1957): K. 516, Adagio ma no troppo

What is surprising is not that these legendary chamber musicians instinctively understood the implied meaning of the written musical text. It is the fact that their interpretation was not taken as a model by musicians of later generations.

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© Dr. Michael Lorenz 2014. All rights reserved.

Updated: 22 November 2024

The Continuing Mutilation of Schubert's "Der Leiermann"

In November 1999, Naxos released a recording of Schubert's "Winterreise" D. 911, performed by baritone Roman Trekel and pianist Ulrich Eisenlohr. This CD, which was the first volume of Naxos's "Deutsche Schubert-Lied-Edition" series, generally received positive reviews. The critics deservedly praised Trekel's singing and only had nice things to say about Eisenlohr's playing. The only person known to me, who – contrary to all the supposedly expert critics – immediately realized that something was wrong with this recording and publicly spoke out about it, was retired college professor of Criminal Justice and avid Fischer-Dieskau aficionado Dr. Celia A. Sgroi, who, on 19 January 2000, posted the following on the "Lieder, Melodies, Art Songs in any language" mailing list, maintained by the University of Houston Listserv:

The pianist, Ulrich Eisenlohr, who delivers competent, and sometimes quite imaginative, playing throughout the cycle, goes completely off the rails in "Der Leiermann." His hurdy-gurdy is more loudly and jarring discordant than any I have ever heard. It gives the song a strangely "modern" sound that is interesting for a moment, but it palls very quickly and the disadvantages are enormous: the listener ends up completely distracted from the singing, and the dischords in the piano make it sound as if the singer is off-pitch. If this is the judgment of one of the initiators of this complete Schubert edition, Naxos may be in considerable trouble. At any rate, I feel sorry for Trekel, who is singing his heart out at that point and all in vain.

Eisenlohr's interpretation of the song "Der Leiermann" is very strange indeed. He apparently thought to be the first pianist who realized how Schubert really meant the piano accompaniment of this song to be performed. Eisenlohr not only plays the short appoggiatura in the left hand as an acciaccatura together with the principal note (he plays the dissonant note a tick earlier than the half notes only in the first two bars), he is also convinced that Schubert wanted the dissonant note to be repeated on the beat of every bass chord throughout the whole song in the way of a simile or segue. The first two chords in Schubert's score have an e# as appoggiatura, but the following ones have none. There is no "simile" or "segue" written in the score.

The first page of Schubert's "Der Leyermann" in the autograph b minor version (US-NYpm, Cary 215, Part II, fol. 15r)

The result of Eisenlohr's bizarre idea is fatal. At the beginning of each measure, all the way through the lied, we now hear a dissonant chord in the bass which reaches a peak of tasteless cruelty at that moment when we realize that, for the first time ever, Schubert's song cycle now ends on a dissonant chord. In a personal e-mail, sent to me on 1 May 2000 via Roman Trekel, Ulrich Eisenlohr defended his interpretation as follows:

As you might perhaps know, the "Leier" is always played with bordun-chords. If some of these bordun-strings are not welltuned,-which is quite likely in winter-time and outdoors,-they will sound a little bit "dirty" ; that is why I play the appogiatura on the beat. There is nothing less meant by Schubert than a correct appogiatura, done by a well-aducated musician. Can we presume that the Leiermann will stop his playing after 2 bars to tune his bordun-strings again? Probably not: he will continue as he has begun: "dreht, und seine Leier steht ihm nimmer still." So, why change the playing of the left hand in the third bar? It is just meant like "simile" or "segue", which is a familiar instruction in classical and romantic music, often not even written by the composers, because they trusted in intelligent interpretors who would know how to read and understand the music. Although I don't think that my kind of playing distracts the listener from the voice - even if it did: would it not be the pendant to the fact, that the singer is distracted from himself, his sorrous and pains, by the playing of the Leiermann? Hope I could calm you just a little bit with these explanations. Kind regards, Ulrich Eisenlohr

Eisenlohr firmly rejected the suggestion that by his curious interpretation he may have branded his illustrious predecessors as unintelligent musicians, who for over 100 years, have been unable to understand Schubert's score. Some of these pianists, who (owing to obvious lack of musical intelligence) failed to grasp the whole "never standing still hurdy-gurdy" idea, are Gerald Moore:

Sviatoslav Richter:

Alfred Brendel:

Murray Perahia:

Daniel Barenboim:

and Leonard Borwick:

Making musical pieces sound "like they have never sounded before" is one of the most effective artistic gimmicks in the current classical music business. In their evaluation of the quality of recordings, some critics nowadays seem to apply the following simple rule: "If I've never heard it played like this before, it must be brilliant!" It seems that the commercial success of some flawed "historically informed" performances is mainly based on this crazy paradigm, and the quite obvious fact that most positive reviews of CDs in glossy music magazines are nothing but paid ads of the recording industry. A perfect recent example is René Jacobs's recording of Mozart's Symphony No. 38 "Prague", which was released in 2007 by Harmonia Mundi. The blurb of this recording promises a revelatory listening experience: "The guiding principle of this interpretation is clarity of texture [...] It forsakes the 19th-century symphonic tradition for a quite different style of rhetoric." Such an announcement cannot bode well. And accordingly, Jacobs forsakes what he considers "the 19th-century symphonic tradition" by ruthlessly botching the long appoggiaturas in bars 17-28 of the symphony's slow introduction.

Bars 16-19 of the strings in the slow introduction of Mozart's symphony K. 504

The musicologist Theodor Kroyer considered the interpretation of the aforesaid appogiaturas so obvious that he had them written out in both of his Eulenburg pocket score editions (Edition Eulenburg No. 446).

Bars 20-25 of the slow introduction of K. 504 in Theodor Kroyer's edition for Eulenburg

Instead of having them played as regular 1/32nds (as intended by Mozart), Jacobs turns the appoggiaturas into short grace notes, because he obviously considers himself more knowledgable in matters of eighteenth-century performance practice than the composer himself. He also misses the point that the five-note motif he is messing up in the introduction is a brilliantly applied thematic inversion of the recurring motif which, from bar 55 on, features prominently in the following Allegro. And yet, this kind of breathtaking musical ignorance goes completely unnoticed, while the critics are raving. Some of them fall for the advertisement ("a quite different style of rhetoric") and the others cannot even read music and do not know the piece to begin with. Jacobs's recording of K. 504 was awarded the "Diapason d'or Arte" from the French magazine Diapason, as well as the highest possible ratings from Classica Répertoire, and ClassicsToday.com. This method of fooling gullible (and totally unqualified) critics works in every genre of classical music, including Schubert songs.

In September 2009, Harmonia Mundi released an eagerly awaited recording of Schubert's "Winterreise", performed by tenor Mark Padmore and pianist Paul Lewis. The British music critics were giddy with excitement. John Steane, critic of the magazine Gramophone ("The world's authority on classical music since 1923") raved as follows:

Ah, this journey! How many have made it, sincerely and imaginatively, two setting out as nearly as possible as one! So many on records too, following the elusive track as with torchlight concentrated upon it. Yet, of all, I cannot think of one (not even Fischer-Dieskau in his 1965 DG recording with Jörg Demus) that leads more faithfully to the cold comfort of its end. And when we get there in this performance, what an end it is! [...] On we go, lulled and tormented by the magic music-box of "Frühlingstraum", till the tragic chord before "so elend nicht" in "Einsamkeit" brings a dreadful reality into focus. The deceptive sweetness of "Die Krähe", the giddy disorientation of "Letzte Hoffnung", the subdued feverish excitements of "Täuschung" find an almost holy stability in "Das Wirtshaus", but still the external world exists, felt as almost an intrusion in "Mut". And soon we meet the organ-grinder. And his secrets must on no account be revealed by reviewer or arts-gossip. And the listener must wait, out of respect to this marvellous partnership of Mark Padmore and Paul Lewis, until time can be taken for it, alone and uninterrupted, to accompany them on the journey through to its unearthly end.

On ClassicalNet the critic Mark Sealey found the following words of praise:

This excellent new Winterreise is one for the twenty-first century. Understated yet passionate; reflective yet not self-indulgent; spare, yet rich in the wonderful melodies in which the cycle abounds, it succeeds in meeting many quite disparate expectations, yet makes no compromises. To sing about recollection, lost love, death and resignation is actually harder than merely to sing mournfully, slowly and wistfully. The two performers here (Mark Padmore, tenor, Paul Lewis, piano) have produced an excellent embodiment of the songs' varying (for variety is key) moods and outlooks.

The London Evening Standard's Nick Kimberley (who also thinks that "Winterreise is about the voice, not the piano") stated: "Schubert couldn't be better served […] Padmore's great gift, apart from his prodigious technical ability,whether to float a line with perfect legato or to enter pianissimo at the top of his range, is to sing from the soul." The recording was awarded the highest honors. It got an "ffff" rating from Télérama, received Gramophone's "Editor's Choice", and "Recording of the Month" laurel, an "IRR Outstanding" from the International Record Review, and eventually won the 2010 Gramophone Award in the category "Solo Vocal". And yet, Padmore's and Lewis's recording is marred by grave musical flaws for which only the pianist bears responsibility. I will not even delve deeper into the embarrassing fact that Lewis – being obviously unaware of the scholarly literature on this topic – still mistakenly aligns the dotted figure in the left hand with the triplet in the right in the songs "Wasserflut" and "Irrlicht". This is not a minor musical detail that can be performed ad libitum. In the Bärenreiter complete edition, Walther Dürr claimed that "The notational style in the sources suggests that triplets and dotted eighths should be treated as rhythmically identical throughout the lied." Dürr was wrong. The whole issue has convincingly been settled once and for all by the American pianist David Montgomery, not only in his article "Triplet Assimilation in the Music of Schubert: Challenging the Ideal" in Historical Performance vol. 6/2 (1993), pp. 79–97, but also in his excellent book Franz Schubert's Music in Performance (2003, Hillsdale: Pendragon Press). In his 1971(!) recording of "Winterreise" with Hermann Prey, the late Wolfgang Sawallisch already showed how the piano introduction of "Wasserflut" is played correctly

As far as the piano part of "Der Leiermann" is concerned, Lewis takes Eisenlohr's mistaken concept to a more extreme and even crueler level. While Eisenlohr, in the first two bars, concedes the dissonance at least a little grace note quality, Lewis plays the dissonant grace note together with the fundamental and the fifth and then releases the grace – but much too late to make it the 1/16 note that is notated in the first two bars. This is the method of playing acciaccature that Artur Schnabel used to recommend: two notes together and then release one of them quickly. But this is not what is written in the score and it does not produce the hurdy-gurdy sound that Schubert was trying to convey. Lewis shows no mercy at all. He ruthlessly repeats the dissonant bass chord up to the final bar of the "Winterreise" which now – in the well-known Eisenlohr tradition – has to end on a dissonant chord (warning to listeners: extremely ugly sound bite!).

Let me explain what Schubert had in mind and why Eisenlohr's and Lewis's interpretations are completely untenable from a musical point of view. Of course, Schubert relied on the "intelligent pianist", but in no way does this mean that Schubert himself was not intelligent enough to unambiguously write down what he wanted the pianist to play. Hurdy-gurdies have multiple drone strings which give a constant pitch accompaniment to the melody, resulting in a sound similar to that of bagpipes. These drone strings are tuned in fifths and fourths, but never in diminished fifths (as played by Eisenlohr and Lewis). Schubert achieves the bagpipe effect of the drone strings with long perfect fifths in the left hand.

The 1/16 grace note, a semitone below the fifth, imitates the short slur caused by the transient state of the string between the first motion of the hurdy-gurdy's wheel and the moment the string reaches its maximum (i.e. continuous) frequency. The grace note in the second bar suggests that the wheel has come to a standstill after the first bar and then is being cranked again. From the third bar on, the short slur (the appoggiatura) is no longer audible, because the wheel must be moved steadily to produce the melody on the hurdy-gurdy's melody strings (i.e. the pianist's right hand). Eisenlohr's argument that his continuing dissonant note shows the "never standing still" of the hurdy-gurdy is the exact opposite of what is going on in Schubert's score: fact of the matter is that the absence of the grace note after two bars proves the steady movement of the hurdy-gurdy's wheel. The dissonant grace note does not represent a third drone string or "a hurdy-gurdy out of tune" (as proposed by Eisenlohr). It cleverly imitates a very short and purely physical event in the course of "warming up" the instrument. There are also esthetic reasons as to why there are only two appoggiaturas in the song. Schubert doubtlessly realized that the repetition of the grace note throughout the whole song would heavily distract from the singing voice and would result in exactly the boring unmusical overkill that Eisenlohr and Lewis achieve with their merciless dissonant redundancy. Schubert knew very well how to repeat a figure if he wanted it. Contrary to a hypothesis, put forward by Nigel Nettheim in The Schubertian (No. 31, January 2001, p. 2f.), there is no "implied simile" in "Der Leiermann". There is no need to even touch the issue of ending the song on a dissonant chord. Not only is it unthinkable from a historical point of view, it is the kind of musical tomfoolery that actually is evidence that Schubert did not want the appoggiatura to be applied in more than two bars: if he had really implied a simile, he would have indicated to end it before the final chord.

None of the above problems in Paul Lewis's performance were ever noticed and addressed by the critics who awarded this particular recording the 2010 Gramophone Award. They seem to have followed Eisenlohr's principle that "there is not just one proper way to read and interprete a work of art" and they were obviously under the impression that Lewis had found some kind of Philosopher's Stone of Schubert performance. Of course, there is a grain of truth in Eisenlohr's point of view. But we must never forget that the number of improper ways to read a work of art is infinite. I have been told that the pianist Wolfram Rieger has been following Eisenlohr's and Lewis's example in his live performances of "Winterreise", together with the singer Thomas Hampson, by droning out the poor "Leiermann" with sixty-one consecutive dissonant bass chords. He will certainly not be the last pianist to do so.

© Dr. Michael Lorenz 2013. All rights reserved.

Updated: 23 April 2025

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Update (20 January 2018)

In his next recording of Winterreise, released in January 2018 by Harmonia Mundi, Mark Padmore found yet another willing accomplice in Kristian Bezuidenhout who (performing on a period instrument) ruthlessly mishandles the piano part of "Der Leiermann" in the fashion described above. It seems that Padmore is the driving force behind this mistaken idea that makes his accompanists suddenly lose all their musical common sense.

Update (13 April 2018)

The next proof that stupidity can go viral among musicians was presented by the English pianist Christopher Glynn who, on his recording of "Winterreise" with the baritone Roderick Williams (in an English version titled Winter Journey), mercilessly demonstrates that Schubert's acoustic depiction of a hurdy-gurdy is much too sophisticated to be understood and performed correctly by today's mortals.

Update (16 December 2021)

One should not believe that the reservoir of Drehleier-nonsense will ever be exhausted. More recent recordings of Schubert's "Winterreise" also offer curious abuse of the piano part of "Der Leiermann". On Markus Schäfer's recording of "Winterreise", which was published in June 2021, the pianist Tobias Koch presents a bizarre combination of Eisenlohr's approach and his own arbitrariness: he brutally plays the dissonance through the entire song, including on the final chord, but demonstrates a bizarre inconsistency in the introduction where he sometimes holds the grace note into the chord and sometimes plays it in unison with the chord. Note the final chord in this recording where human stupidity again comes to audible fruition.

In 2015, the tenor Daniel Behle published a double CD on the Sony Classics label, entitled "Winterreisen" where he combined his own arrangement of the cycle for voice and piano trio with the "original version" for voice and piano. Unfortunately, Behle's pianist Oliver Schnyder could not untangle his mind from Behle's "arrangement" (recomposition) of "Der Leiermann" where, at the beginning of the song, a grossly unmusical "grace note" from a third above is introduced by the ruthless arranger (composer). Accordingly (and unfortunately), Schnyder also plays this grotesque note in the supposed original version of "Der Leiermann" – which does not come from Schubert but from Behle. One has to hear it to believe it.

This reminds me of a question I always ask on such occasions: where are the Schubert police when you really need them?

Update (12 February 2022)

Fortunately, only now, it came to my attention that in a more recent recording of "Winterreise", Roman Trekel found yet another accompanist in Oliver Pohl who proudly demonstrates that he has no idea how a hurdy-gurdy works and how to correctly play a Schubert score. Pohl's imitation (parody?) of Ulrich Eisenlohr's misinterpretation of "Der Leiermann" is availablable in a complete recording of "Winterreise" on YouTube.

On 11 February 2022, Alpha Classics released Bernhard Appl's recording of "Winterreise" which had been long awaited by servile journalists who in the past had heaped praise on the German baritone's recordings. Appl's accompanist on this new CD is the South African pianist James Baillieu. One could write a detailed review of this CD, addressing all of Appl's vocal problems, which reveal themselves in the interpretation of Schubert's lieder. Appl has a quite pleasant voice which sometimes sounds very nice in slow tempi. However, the moment he has to sing fast melodic material, his intonation slips completely and he produces (usually slightly sharp) notes that leave the listener in the dark as to which key he is actually singing in. So far, this has been particularly unpleasant in his interpretations of up-tempo arias by Bach, such as "Großer Herr, o starker König" from the cantata BWV 248. Not surprisingly, Appl runs into similar problems in the fast lieder of "Winterreise" and it is certainly no coincidence that a promotional video on YouTube only features the lied "Gute Nacht". In "Der stürmische Morgen" he is close to tipping over into an off-pitch Sprechgesang that merely outlines the melody. But that is a side issue here. As he has already shown in 2021, in a live performance with Mark Padmore, the pianist James Baillieu is completely infected with the Eisenlohr virus and plays the well-known dreaded dissonance in the bass in every bar of "Der Leiermann". And of course, he also applies this unmusical tomfoolery in the final chord. What an unrecognized avant-gardist and revolutionary Neutöner this Schubert was! It can be safely presumed that the paid reviews in glossy music magazines will be ecstatic in their praise of this new release.