Hans Zender’s radical reimagining of Schubert’s Winterreise may have baffled critics when it came out in 1994, but three decades on it stands as one of the most vivid and inventive commentaries on the song cycle ever created. His “composed interpretation” – not merely an arrangement – treats Schubert’s music as a living organism, expanding and distorting its emotional palette through a 26-player ensemble that draws on bass clarinet, contrabassoon, accordion, guitar, massed melodicas, and an arsenal of percussion. 

This recording was made in conjunction with a staged performance at London’s Southbank Centre featuring the ever intrepid Nicholas Collon and his Aurora Orchestra, a plucky ensemble that has been known to play The Rite of Spring from memory. The soloist, whose stage performance was as theatrically daring as anything I’ve seen, is the remarkable British tenor Allan Clayton.

With or without staging, the score reveals an astonishingly detailed landscape of colour, atmosphere and psychological tension, brought into sharp focus by Clayton and the musicians, each of whom is essentially a soloist. 

From the outset, Zender’s sound world asserts itself. The rustle of sandblocks and col legno strings evoke the protagonist’s trudging steps, immediately establishing a febrile aural environment in which physicality and psychology are inseparable. Zender heightens Schubert’s emotional extremities through fragmentation, harmonic distortion and sudden changes of texture. Collon’s direction ensures that these elements remain fluid rather than self-conscious: diaphanous passages shimmer weightlessly, while eruptions of brass and percussion carry a brutal force that suggests the traveller’s fraying grip on sanity.

Clayton, known for his compelling interpretations of isolated characters, brings remarkable nuance to the vocal line. On disc, he doesn’t quite venture to the extremes he did on stage. Nevertheless, the sheer range of his expression captures the protagonist’s wide-eyed desperation. Disorientated flickers of hope and hollow despair are communicated through timbre, phrasing and breath. His bright, clean tenor rides easily over the occasionally strident orchestration. His diction, needless to say, is crystalline.

The orchestral writing is arguably where Zender’s vision becomes most transformative. In Das Wirtshaus (The Inn), side drum, timpani, and bass drum conjure a nightmarish, Mahler-tinged funeral procession. Xylophone, wind machine, gongs and cymbals expand the cycle’s emotional spectrum into something almost cinematic. Yet Zender also honours the folk-like intimacy of Schubert’s original. Der Lindenbaum (The Linden Tree), often treated as the cycle’s emotional anchor, emerges here with delicate touches of guitar, accordion and melodicas. These kinds of timbres could easily slip into kitsch but here, thanks to Collon’s sensitive control, they deepen the sense of memory and longing.

Aurora Orchestra’s reputation for fearless interpretation serves the piece well. Their ability to move seamlessly between razor-edged precision and improvisatory looseness captures the score’s volatile spirit. Zender often fractures Schubert’s melodies or pushes them toward harmonic collapse, and the ensemble responds with a psychological acuity that makes the music feel simultaneously familiar and disquieting.

At 85 gripping minutes, this is a starkly compelling listening experience: a portrait of a man walking deeper and deeper into an existential winter. Clayton’s performance charts the emotional through-line, sustaining a slow descent into isolation and despair that never flags or loses focus. The final moments – the encounter with the hurdy-gurdy man, rendered by Zender in spectral, desiccated textures – makes for an unforgettable conclusion: the sound of resignation as a traveller steps beyond the world.

A brave, probing account of this phantasmagorical score, then, and one that reaffirms its status as a work of unique imagination and emotional potency.

Listen on Apple Music

Composer: Zender
Works: Schubert’s Winterreise: A Composed Interpretation
Performers: Allan Clayton t, Aurora Orchestra/Nicholas Collon
Label: Signum SIGCD964