New Year’s Concert: Schubert Voyage

At the New Year’s opening concert at the Arvo Pärt Centre, bassoonist Martin Kuuskmann and pianist Kristjan Randalu will present arrangements from Franz Schubert’s vocal cycle Winterreise, uniquely blending classical and jazz influences. Having created his own version of Schumann’s Dichterliebe, Randalu brings a fresh approach to Schubert’s famous song cycle as well, adding jazz elements while preserving its classical foundation. In collaboration with bassoonist Martin Kuuskmann, a duo with a distinctive sound emerges through the combination of piano and bassoon, offering Schubert’s music across entirely new sonic landscapes. This innovative interpretation brings a dynamic and expressive twist to the original work, weaving together emotion and spontaneity in a captivating way.

Martin Kuuskmann and Kristjan Randalu first met at the Tallinn Music High School in 1985, and some twenty years later in New York they performed together in several projects of Kristjan Järvi’s Absolute Ensemble.
This was followed by the duo album Nonstop. The idea for the Winterreise programme originated from Martin Kuuskmann.

Kristjan Randalu has said that Schubert’s music became dear to him during the 1990s, when he played it often in Germany.
Schubert’s songs have accompanied him for years, and now, in this new version, the composer’s famous cycle resonates in the musical language of jazz, giving the musicians ample freedom to reshape the material according to their own vision.

Franz Schubert composed the song cycle Winterreise, Op. 89 – the second cycle in which he set Wilhelm Müller’s poems to music – in 1827. Winterreise is a much darker work than its earlier, more light-hearted predecessor Die schöne Müllerin. It is a monologue of a grieving lover’s journey, marked by longing and sorrow, with the poems becoming increasingly existential – paralleling Schubert’s deteriorating health – yet his ability to translate the passion of words into music remained unsurpassed to the end.

Given Schubert’s extraordinary skill in reflecting emotions and meanings through musical motifs and expressive means, pianist Kristjan Randalu and bassoonist Martin Kuuskmann’s attempt to reinterpret Winterreise in a purely instrumental form appears as a logical continuation of the composer’s original intentions.