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Winterreise, D9.11
Franz Schubert, Wilhelm Müller (poet)
December 2, 4, 6, 9, 11, 13, 2002
John Jay College Theatre, New York
(under Lincoln Center auspices)
Simon Keenlyside
And The Trisha Brown Dance Company
..Photo by Marilyn Kingwill, ArenaPal
Director / Choreographer
Trisha Brown
Simon Keenlyside, Baritone
Pedja Muzijevic,Piano
Trisha Brown Dance Company
Brandi L. Norton
Seth Parker
Lionel Popkin
Jennifer Tipton (lighting), Elizabeth Cannon (costumes)
What the critics say
Spare Look, Stark Poems and Sad Songs.
A review by Anna Kisselgoff for the New York Times December 4, 2002
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E07EED7163BF937A35751C1A9649C8B63
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“Yet the baritone Simon Keenlyside, more than admirably tormented in his emotional range, is no mere recitalist wandering through the 24 songs of a winter journey toward death.”
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“Yet make no mistake about it. Mr. Keenlyside is the emotional center of the piece. And without his lyrical vulnerability and the dark registers of his anger as well as Mr. Muzijevic's sensitive playing, this production would not be what it is.”
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December 2002 performance at John Jay College
Reviewed by F. Paul Driscoll for Opera News March 2003
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“For most baritones, the musical and dramatic riches of Schubert's Winterreise are difficult enough to realize while standing still. The adventurous Simon Keenlyside chose to add dance into the mix, when he took on the Schubert cycle as choreographed by the distinguished modern-dance pioneer Trisha Brown, as part of her company's season at Manhattan's John Jay College of Criminal Justice (seen Dec. 2). Presented as a "New Visions" project in Lincoln Center's "Great Performers" series, this Winterreise was remarkable for Keenlyside's concentration and lyric grace (both physical and vocal); Brown's inventive movement sequences and scrupulous sense of rhythm; pianist Pedja Muzijevic's even-tempered, firm accompaniment; and Jennifer Tipton's miraculously clear lighting. But the whole proved to be considerably less than its very well-intentioned parts; seventy minutes' worth of intelligent, sensitive details had no cumulative impact. Schubert's story of a lovelorn wanderer on his way toward death was nowhere to be seen. The drama was instead centered on whether or not an attractive young singer could keep pace with three professional dancers (Brandi L. Norton, Seth Parker and Lionel Popkin) and still manage to sing. That he did, beautifully. But in most cases -- Antony Tudor's Dark Elegies, Eliot Feld's At Midnight, George Balanchine's Liebeslieder Waltzes -- these lieder/dance hybrids seem less like stuntwork if the singer remains stationary.”
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.“Deborah Jowitt for The New york Times, December 11 - 17, 2002
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"I arrived a stranger,/a stranger I depart." The winter wanderer of Wilhelm Müller's poem cycle Winterreise is not just mourning a destroyed love affair; he is slowly withdrawing from hope and life. In 24 ravishing songs, Franz Schubert transformed the protagonist's self-pity into something nobler and more lyrical. Trisha Brown, working with the magnificent British baritone Simon Keenlyside, lighting designer Jennifer Tipton, and three of her splendid dancers - Brandi L. Norton, Seth Parker, and Lionel Popkin - has further transfigured it. In this Winterreise (alternating at John Jay College Theater through December 13 with two programs of Brown's dances), Keenlyside, finely abetted by pianist Pedja Muzijevic, not only sings wonderfully; he has a beautiful presence - simple, modest, and up to everything Brown proposes. He launches himself toward us headfirst and several feet off the ground in "The Stormy Morning"; he sings cantilevered in various ways against the dancers' upraised feet and delivers the entire "Dream of Spring" lying on the bed they have formed for him. At one hopeful point, he breaks into a small, angular dance.
Tipton's contribution is major. At its simplest, the stage is bathed in a
cool-gold gleam. In lighter moments, wisps of clouds appear on the backdrop. Shadows and surrounding darkness become potent presences. When the hero sings of his failed love and his companion the moon, and Norton slowly orbits him in a white hoopskirt sparkling with frost, her shadow obliterates his face whenever she passes. In the final song, "The Organ Grinder," Popkin's elongated shadow - arms reach across the backcloth toward where Keenlyside stands in the blackness beside the piano. Brown's most powerful motif is one in which the three dancers, lined up behind Keenlyside, form their arms into shapes that can suggest the branches of "The Linden Tree," the wings of "The Crow," rays of sun; they also become succoring arms that wind and slip around the singer. A brilliant irony: The hero, so alone in his grief and the bleak landscape, is always watched, caught, held.”
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Review by Susan Yung: Cave-dwellers; Winter was Hard
Varone Mines Kentucky; Brown Winters with Schubert
http://www.danceinsider.com/f2002/f1210_1.html
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“Winterreise is a true collaboration between Brown and Keenlyside, who previously portrayed Orfeo beautifully under her direction. Keenlyside blended in naturally with Brown's dancers. His stature is similar to theirs, and he moved confidently and easily without a hint of stiffness, through all manner of positions, even singing crouched to the ground like a dog sniffing the earth. His voice was clear, accurate, agile, and seemingly gained strength throughout the rigors of the cycle.”
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A Baritone Who Dances, Too? Well, Not Quite, but Almost
By Matthew Gurewitsch
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DANCERS come in many shapes and sizes. Plenty are less obviously flexible and athletic than the English baritone Simon Keenlyside. Glimpsed in rehearsal garb in the spare yet airy spaces of Trisha Brown's studio in midtown
Manhattan, he might be waiting for his cue as the puppet hero of Stravinsky's "Petrouchka." The square face with its broad, guileless smile; the wide, sad eyes; the Raggedy Andy thatch of light brown hair: it all looks straight from Central Casting.
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In fact, what has brought Mr. Keenlyside to New York for five weeks of intensive rehearsal is a staging by Ms. Brown of "Winterreise" ("Winter Journey"), the song cycle by Franz Schubert that stands as the summit of the classical recitalist's art. Commissioned by the New Visions series at Lincoln Center, the production receives its premiere tomorrow at the John Jay College Theater, forming a full-length program of the Trisha Brown Dance Company's repertory season.
Four years ago, Mr. Keenlyside and Ms. Brown were thrown together at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels for a production of Monteverdi's "Orfeo," the masterpiece with which the true history of opera begins. (The project was later seen at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and other international showcases.) Mr. Keenlyside's performance in the title role has received a lasting testimonial in the second edition of The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians: it was "notable for its single-minded intensity."
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Stimulated by that first encounter, Mr. Keenlyside asked if Ms. Brown would stage a recital for him. "By default," Mr. Keenlyside said in early November between rehearsals, "we wound up with `Winterreise.' It has a direction. It has an arc." Yes, but it really has no action. Rather than telling a story, "Winterreise" (set to poems by Wilhelm Müller) charts the aftermath of a story. In spring, a young stranger arrived in a new town and fell in love. By winter, his hopes of marriage are dashed, and we join him as he sets out on his long, aimless trek through a snowy wasteland. Twenty-four songs and 75 minutes later, we leave him as he stands half-frozen, mesmerized by the cheerless chant of a spectral organ grinder.
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"Winterreise," on many counts, was a daring choice. First of all, there was the totemic stature of a work that until this year Mr. Keenlyside thought he should save for when he was older. (He is 43.) For another thing, the idea of staging "Winterreise" was hardly novel. In the late 1990's, the high-strung British tenor Ian Bostridge filmed a version for television, directed by David Alden. Word was out, too, of a future Robert Wilson production for Jessye Norman, which has in the meantime reached the stage in Paris.
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More to the point, should "Winterreise" be visualized at all? All sound is grist to the mill of choreography these days, from total silence to Bach's "St. Matthew Passion." Still, for generations, singers of "Winterreise" have held audiences spellbound with song alone, operating in the usual concert format. Mr. Keenlyside admits that his first experiences with the cycle — nearly a dozen performances earlier this year in conventional settings — felt complete in themselves.
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Even so, was there perhaps some element lacking that he thought choreography might supply? Something that might release something in his own interpretation or facilitate understanding in an audience?
"You're asking if it will it add up to more than the sum of its parts," Mr. Keenlyside answered with painful candor. "And that's the question. Anybody can talk up a show before it opens. But it's like with a footballer. What he does has to speak for itself. If it's good, you'll know."
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And what, exactly, is Ms. Brown up to? Is her choreography at all narrative, aimed at teasing out the poems' shreds of story line? Is it to any extent illustrative, inspired by the poet's highly specific images and metaphors? "There are about five methods I'm employing," Ms. Brown said, in a separate conversation. She spoke of "movement cells," of "hovering metaphors," of movements that become "objects": "a place, a pathway, a set piece for Simon to use."