Following the success of Jonas Kaufmann’s debut album on Sony Classical, The Verdi Album, Sony Classical are pleased to release its first recital disc with the world’s top tenor. Along with Franz Schubert’s earlier song cycle Die Schöne Müllerin, Winterreise is generally considered the composer’s greatest contribution to the Lied repertoire. The Winterreise song cycle (Winter Journey) is set to 24 poems by the poet Wilhelm Müller and was completed by Schubert a year before his death in 1827. After over 20 years of working together and countless performances of Winterreise, Jonas Kaufmann and his piano-partner Helmut Deutsch finally commit the Olympus of the Lied repertoire to disc. What started as a teacher-student relationship at the Münchner Hochschule für Musik und Theater has long since developed into a close professional partnership. Helmut Deutsch is recognised as one of the world's foremost Lieder pianists.
“Even shelves heaving with Winter’s Journeys should find space for Kaufmann’s...Few tenor versions of this great cycle are sung with such depth of tone, so wide a spectrum of colours or such a poetic a response to Müller’s texts. In Deutsch, Kaufmann has an ideal travelling companion.”
Sunday TimesGramophone Magazine Editor's Choice
