top
Home Labels Contact
Swansong
Franz Schubert

Swansong

Sir John Tomlinson | Christopher Glynn

Label: Signum Classics
Format: CD
Barcode: 0635212055021
barcode
Catalog number: SIGCD 550
Releasedate: 05-10-18
- English translation

- Performed by celebrated soloists Sir John Tomlinson, Sophie Bevan, Julian Bliss and Alec Frank-Gemmill

- Sir John Tomlinson brings his insight and nuance to these profound works

 

Christopher Glynn continues his series of late Schubert song cycles in English.

"Schubert’s Swansong, though not itself a cycle, is a logical extension of Die Schöne Müllerin and Winterreise. Here again are the brooks and the birds, the jilted suitors leaving town, the lovers looking at or into the beloved’s house. Loss and longing are everywhere. But if Schöne Müllerin is about hope (finding someone to love) and Winterreise is about despair (leaving someone loved), Schwanengesang is about resignation. The beloved is not by your side and one can deal with that in different ways. By sending messages via rivers, trees or even pigeons. By flight, by self-imposed exile, by dreaming of what might have been and by accepting what never will. The distant or absent beloved is present in almost every song, and though there is no journey involved as in the previous cycles, there is a unity in this collection which shows one where Schubert’s thoughts were. He knew he was going to die and die alone." - Christopher Glynn