In her memoir Translation as Transhumance, Mireille Gansel explains how her encounters with the German language have been transformed by hearing it spoken by exiles, ‘survivors, all speaking the same language, from a world that is no more’:

Within the realm of musicology, the word innig has become bound up with a particular branch of German Romanticism. Yet Gansel’s use of the word here is broader: innig has to do with a linguistic identity that accumulates and adumbrates history. That she resorts to a musical image, though, is significant. It is perhaps easiest to imagine an instrument or indeed a person retaining ways of speaking or indeed singing. At least in theory, something similar might be said of musical works, which through time and travel accrue performance practices and associations. As the recording under review demonstrates, however, the ‘interior language’ of the song cycle can seem surprisingly resistant to crossing borders of genre or to the promise of new interpretations.

Richard Krug’s transcription of Schubert’s Winterreise for bass-baritone and string quartet might hark back to nineteenth-century practices of adaptation and arrangement. Whereas previously such transcriptions were intended to aid dissemination of works through enabling their performance in various contexts (for ensembles of different types and sizes and for playing at home) this version seems to draw the song cycle more firmly into the concert hall. One might play through Winterreise at the piano at home; it’s unlikely there’ll be a quartet on hand. Krug, however, has the good fortune to be the cellist of the Copenhagen Quartet, which plays on this recording. The liner notes offer no particular rationale for the project, beyond the pragmatic explanation that the Quartet was invited by the Royal Library in Copenhagen to play a series of concerts of arrangements of Schubert songs with baritone; critical responses were ‘so overwhelmingly positive’ that they decided to make a CD.

Combining voice and quartet raises some interesting questions about the relationship of lieder to chamber music. Schubert’s propensity to use song melodies in his quartets is well known, as is his inventive – for which read ‘instrumentalizing’ – piano-writing in his lieder. Hearing the piano part of Winterreise played by string quartet might, then, illuminate the similarities across genres, encouraging us to hear the song cycle on a continuum with the late chamber music. Strikingly, to me at least, the quartet transcription instead highlights the differences between Schubert’s writing for piano and strings. It seems clear that timbre was an important consideration in Schubert’s approach to musical form and structure, as a way to provide variety and contrast; it is also apparent that the piano and the string quartet sometimes prompt contrasting generic and topical associations. Take, for example, the chords that begin the first song, ‘Gute Nacht’. Heard on the piano, they are generally taken to convey the protagonist’s trudging footsteps. Heard played by quartet they seem more in the vein of conventional block chord accompaniment, and might even be said to be somewhat perky. The opening of ‘Der Lindenbaum’ sounds lovely and warm played by strings; there is no chill to the breeze rustling the leaves of this lime tree. This is a different kind of winter’s journey – not through the bleak landscapes with which we are familiar from traditional renditions of Winterreise, but through a much balmier sonic setting.

Krug does not stray far from Schubert’s original figurations but does have to make some rhythmic conversions to suit the stringed instruments. Occasionally the revoicing also has harmonic implications. There is some flattening out as a result: in ‘Wasserflut’ the disparity between the triplets in the vocal line and the dotted rhythm in the piano is altered so that the ensemble plays together. There is also some fleshing out: in ‘Rückblick’ the cello playing the bass line accentuates its doubling of the voice, and similarly the bare unison line that opens ‘Irrlicht’ in the piano is given fuller harmonies. There are some ingenious moments – for example, the high right-hand melody at the start of ‘Die Krähe’ is played by the violin but made less saccharine with the doublings of a pizzicato cello. The slightly sinister neighbour-note motif of the third verse swoops convincingly with the crow when played by strings. Pizzicato also helps with the scattered staccato opening of ‘Letzte Hoffnung’, all the better to convey the trembling leaves at which the protagonist stares and to contrast with the more legato, bowed sections. The dance-like melody of ‘Täuschung’ is made still more enchanting by being played sweetly by the quartet; the hymn-like texture of ‘Das Wirthaus’ is richer and more welcoming. It then becomes harder, though, to detect the disillusionment of the final line of ‘Täuschung’ (‘Nur Täuschung ist für mich Gewinn!’) or to sense that in ‘Das Wirthaus’ the wanderer is disappointed by not finding his place in the graveyard.

The famous final song of the cycle, ‘Der Leiermann’, is effective primarily because it is played without vibrato, emphasizing the extended drone of the bassline and lending a forlorn quality to the violin’s melody. More variety of tone and touch throughout the rest of this ‘orchestration’ of Winterreise might have helped negate the feeling that Schubert’s cycle is made less melancholy and as a result more ordinary by the sound-world of the string quartet. Krug’s alteration of figurations so that the ensemble works better together skates over some of the rhythmic conflicts in Schubert’s songs that suggest the protagonist’s disturbed state. It is not quite painting-by-numbers, but the range of colours on the palette seems sometimes too bright when compared to the starker, greyscale contrasts of the piano-and-voice version.

Perhaps most problematic is the impact the transcription has on the role of the singer. Some of the songs are transposed to facilitate their performance by the quartet, meaning that they sound as if they do not lie entirely comfortably within the range of bass-baritone Johan Reuter. He has a glorious voice, full and rich, and delivers the words with grace and clarity. This is not, however, a performance about him. There are few of the liberties other singers would take in terms of tempo or affect and, as a result, there is little sense of this being Reuter’s interpretation of Winterreise. Instead, he becomes a fifth member of the ensemble, fitting in where, conventionally, we would expect the winter traveller to stand alone.

Krug’s Winterreise does not convey the exilic experience described by Gansel: the adopted accents and customs of the string quartet to my ears do not retain the songs’ Innigkeit. There is little sense of continuity between old and new performance practices as might be expected of such an arrangement, which might resonate with the Schubertiade of old. But then, Winterreise was rarely performed in its entirety in the nineteenth century. The anachronism of hearing the complete cycle, with quartet rather than piano, is not underlined here as it is in works such as Hans Zender’s ‘composed interpretation’ from 1993. There are, though, so many recordings of Winterreise for piano and voice that being encouraged to imagine alternative versions – even less desolate ones, like Krug’s – cannot be a bad thing.