Weekend Concert 5: Schubert's "Winterreise" (Winter Journey)

2006/8/18 21:38:33

Schubert's song cycle "Winterreise" -- the greatest vocal work in human history. No language can do it justice. One can only listen. Within it lies all of humanity's pain, helplessness, and that nameless hope. The cycle consists of 24 songs. A wanderer begins an eternal journey in winter, like humanity, cast adrift in this desolate universe -- this is a song of the human soul. A humanity without homeland, a wandering humanity. Especially in this era of industrial civilization and rampant globalization, machines crush humans, humanity's material homeland is polluted, humanity's spiritual homeland was laid waste long ago. Humanity has no Eden, only wandering. The end of wandering is death, but there is the namelessness of hope. Hope transcends life and death, but there is no homeland.

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