(Zender)winterreise: Pregardien(T), Cambreling / Klangforum Wien (2CD)

In this "composer's interpretation" Hans Zender takes on the sacred cow that is Franz Schubert's song cycle "Die Winterreise" and reconstructs it, much in the way a modern stage director might recontextualize an opera by changing its setting. The words and melodies remain and the sequence of songs is intact, but the accompaniments are rendered with a sense of fantasy, varying from a folksy guitar-and-harmonium background or the parlor intimacy of a string quartet to a completely modern percussion ensemble. At moments it sounds as if the poor love-forsaken traveler has wandered into a scene from Strauss or Berg, but what prevails above all is the haunted atmosphere of the original, the tandem vision of Schubert and the poet Muller that takes the listener from the pointed immediacy of heartbreak to the blurred numbness of insanity.