CD Review | Rachel Fenlon, Winterreise

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Orchid Classics
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Schubert: Winterreise

Rachel Fenlon, soprano & piano

Orchid Classics, 2024

Franz Schubert’s devastatingly confessional song cycle, Winterreise (1828) charts the journey of a spurned narrator through 24 songs set to poems by Wilhelm Müller. It is a pinnacle of Romanticism and foundational to the German Lied (Song) tradition. Although more associated with male singers, it was recorded by German mezzo-soprano Elena Gerhardt as early as 1928 and, in more recent times, by mezzos Christa Ludwig, Brigitte Fassbaender and contralto Nathalie Stutzmann. What makes Canadian soprano Rachel Fenlon’s new traversal unique is that she acts as her own accompanist, the first artist ever to do so on record.

What could have been no more than a party trick turns out to be a deeply satisfying performance that etches all of the emotional and musical peaks and valleys of this monumental cycle. As Fenlon recounts in the booklet, she immersed herself in the piece during the depths of the pandemic while living on the edge of a forest outside Berlin. “Throughout the two years that followed, I learned the work slowly, methodically. I would often journal about the text and take walks for hours in the forest, imagining the music, allowing it to find me inside of my soul.” This considered approach gives this recording a lived-in, conversational quality in which Fenlon’s pianism informs her vocals and vice versa.

So many telling details emerge, like in “Frühlingstraum” (“Dream of Spring”) where Fenlon’s lyric soprano drifts off into delicious and heartbreaking reverie as she sings “I close my eyes again, my heart still beats so warmly. Leaves on my window, when will you turn green?” Likewise, in “Der greise Kopf” (“The Grey Head”), Fenlon’s word painting is exquisite. At first, she rejoices, thinking she is already old and has perhaps weathered life’s trials, only to be snapped back into reality when she looks into a mirror and sees her hair is still black, not grey. Listen to how she transitions from a whispered, almost purred tone quality on the word “sunset” to her bright, clear declaration of “morning” in the phrase “between sunset and the light of morning many a head has turned grey.”

Fenlon is Berlin-based and her longtime German immersion pays off in diction that is idiomatic and clear. She has found a niche for her art, giving self-accompanied recitals all over Europe and Canada. As former Canadian Opera Company and current Paris Opera director Alexander Neef writes in his excellent program notes: “Fenlon’s performance echoes the Vienna of 1827 when Schubert first performed the cycle for his friends, accompanying himself on the piano.” The recording, produced and engineered by Carl Talbot at Le Domaine Forget de Charlevoix in May 2023, offers a wonderful ambience, well balanced between voice and piano. A beautiful, fresh addition to the Winterreise recorded legacy.