Reflecting the bright neon lights of the city, people gathered from the early spring rain just to go for the long-awaited "Winter Journey". For two consecutive nights, Cadillac Shanghai Concert Hall opened two "Winter Journey" with completely different scenery. Although they are both classic melody written by Schubert, they depict two completely different spiritual worlds.
As the grand concert of the 41st Shanghai Spring International Music Festival, tonight, British tenor Mark Padmore and pianist Imogen Cooper will take the lead in taking the stage, going back to the origins with pure vocals and piano originals, and recreating the romantic loneliness of winter with pure German and Austrian original sounds. Tomorrow night, American bass bass Andrew Munn will present a new premiere of "Last Winter Journey: Looping Soundscape" for the 2026 Digital Muse-Music Technology Sunac Festival, relying on years of environmental protection practice in the Appalachian coal region.
The vocals and piano complement each other perfectly
From the ancient "Little Ice Age" to the current new era of AI empowerment and cross-border symbiosis, the two "Winter Journey" will create an in-depth dialogue across time and space, connecting humanity and ecology in the collision of the old and the new.
Two people and one piano sang Schubert's deep feelings
As the pinnacle of German and Austrian art songs, "Winterreise" was born in Schubert's "Little Ice Age" and is full of profound philosophical thoughts of loneliness, wandering and fate. That night, the authentic original performance evoked an irreplaceable soul resonance in the hearts of music fans.
Known as "the benchmark for Schubert interpretation", Padmore has already transcended the boundaries of traditional lyric singing. He uses a half-talking, half-singing chanting technique and exquisite sound field design to amplify the wanderer's broken and struggling inner monologue; he also incorporates Beckett's literary philosophy, allowing the traveler to express the unsolvable confusion in his fate with the stubbornness of "knowing that the road ahead is barren, but still insisting on rushing to the distance."
Pianist Imogen Cooper has a deep understanding of Schubert's works
This classic collaboration adds a layer of farewell warmth with the appearance of Imogen Cooper. This piano master, who has officially announced that he will make his final stage performance with "Winter Journey" in 2027, will perform in Shanghai this time, a unique and out-of-print performance for Chinese music fans. During the interview, Cooper admitted that Schubert held an irreplaceable weight in her heart: "He had the purest humanity and used melody to accommodate all the emotions in the world." She always believed that Schubert's illness in his later years cut off worldly warmth, but allowed him to melt all the loneliness and longing in his heart into notes, achieving a moving power that spans hundreds of years. Deeply involved in Schubert's works, Cooper is also well versed in vocal music. She said bluntly: "I learned to breathe from singers, and those long and stretched phrases came to life. They taught me how to let the piano learn to tell stories."
This performance in Shanghai is a unique and out-of-print performance that Cooper (left) left to Chinese music fans.
The whole performance is extremely simple and pure, with only the human voice and the sound of the piano to outline everything: the trembling of lime leaves, the low-flying jackdaws, and the tiny sound of the cracking glacier, all flowing slowly between the black and white piano keys. The human voice narrates the story, and the sound of the piano spreads out the vast winter scenery, describing the loneliness of the winter in Vienna and the coldness of the Alpine glaciers. The rise and fall of his fingertips reflect Cooper's lifelong artistic perception; the echo of his singing voice reflects Padmore's thorough and profound humanistic interpretation. This authentic "Winter Journey" not only reproduces the classics from two hundred years ago, but also contains the deepest awe and confession of Schubert from two generations of masters, reaching the softest resonance in the hearts of the audience.
Pure sound outlines all things
Cross-border exploration sounds the alarm for environmental protection
Very different from the scenery of the previous night, "Post-Winter Journey: Looping Sound", which debuted on April 4, is a bold cross-border innovation – based on the present and questioning the future. Creator Andrew Munn integrated his many years of ecological and environmental protection practice into music creation, sublimating the private grief of love and loss in the original work into a metaphor for the era of separation between man and nature.
Having been deeply engaged in environmental protection in Appalachian coal mining areas for many years, Munn had an epiphany while singing "Winter Journey" in the mountains and fields: the icy winter described by Schubert had already quietly mutated under the influence of global warming. The romantic image of ice and snow has now become a realistic warning of melting glaciers and ecological endangerment.
Subversive adaptation breaks traditional stage boundaries
This subversive adaptation completely breaks the traditional stage boundaries. The creative team went to many places in Belgium, Latvia, and Berlin to experiment. Based on Schubert's original vocals and piano, with the help of transducers, underwater microphones and other equipment, the music transmitted resonant sounds through ice, metal, and wood, allowing the audience to truly hear the original sound field of melting ice and snow and the change of everything.
In addition, the creative team also went to the Hallstatt Glacier near Schubert's hometown to shoot scenes, using AI to reconstruct the poetic scenery of the Alps two hundred years ago, and let it overlap with the real-life images of the melting glaciers today, arousing people's attention to the ecological environment. During the performance, Munn will also incorporate field recordings from the Yangtze River Basin, allowing the ecological changes of the Danube and Yangtze Rivers to echo across the air, and connect environmental thinking from a global perspective.
Experiments in many places, glacier shooting
What's special is that this extraordinary performance is not in a traditional concert hall, but in the private space of the B2 "Music Cube" of the Shanghai Concert Hall, replicating the immersive atmosphere of Schubert's private salon, allowing technology and nature to seamlessly blend.
From a pure and simple humanistic review to an avant-garde ecological cry, the two "Winter Journey" allow the audience to hear two extreme expressions of the same classic – the former preserves the essence of art and retains the last winter affection of romanticism with human voice and piano sound; the latter breaks dimensional barriers and uses technology as a bridge to allow ancient melodies to carry the contemporary mission. An audience member who bought tickets for two consecutive performances said: "I look forward to hearing the echoes of history and seeing the answers of the times in the blend of old and new notes."
