Schubert: Die Schone Mullerin

Thomas Guthrie writes - In 2001, I had studied for a PhD at York University under the guidance of the inspirational conductor, musicologist and all-round Lieder lover, Peter Seymour. Our subject was ornamentation in Schubert Lieder. I was a poor student, and never finished it, but my eyes and ears were opened to the idea that Schubert expected his singers to ornament - and adapt in other ways - his music. I also learnt some of the wider ideas inherent in Rhetoric, an obsession of the literati of the Renaissance (and later). At the heart of this antique science, based on the art of both speech writing and speech giving, is the idea that genuine engagement with an audience demands spontaneity and invention. According to the rules of Rhetoric, this should be exactly half of it, right down to questions of tempo, instrumentation, expression and even the notes themselves.In this context, performing Schubert songs in white tie and tails, standing in the crook of a large grand piano in a refined, often large-capacity cultural venue, began to seem to me to be inauthentic, and even contrary to the spirit in which Schubert had composed them. I hope you can feel even a tiny whiff of it as you listen to these songs. Above all, I hope they conjure some sense of the Schubert that perhaps we have come to miss - a lover of relaxed storytelling through friendship, humanity, and intimacy.