Winter Journey is a body of work comprising twenty-four 61 x 61 cm canvases painted in acrylic or acrylic and oil, inspired by the twenty-four respective Winterreise poems famously set to music by Franz Schubert.
The paintings are also reproduced in a beautiful hard-cover booklet containing 2-CD recordings of Schubert’s Winterreise/Winter Journey sung both in the original German text of Wilhelm Müller and in a new English translation, featuring Nathan Lay (baritone) and Brian Chapman (pianist and translator).
The 2-CD Winter Journey/Winterreise CD and booklet may also be purchased from our Made @ Montsalvat shop.
*PLEASE NOTE: The new English CD recording of Winter Journey will be played continuously in the Long Gallery during exhibiting hours.
Long Gallery, July 31 – August 25
Brian Chapman on Winterreise:
To present the music of Schubert’s Winterreise to a visual arts audience in particular and to a wider musical audience than is usually attracted to German lieder, I judged that it would be wise to perform the work in English – something that is almost never done these days; accordingly I prepared a new English translation of Müller’s original German poems, fitting the words into Müller’s rhyming structure and to Schubert’s melodies and rhythms. It was also judged that, in order to interest the traditional German lieder audience in addition to the intended wider audience, we should produce a 2-CD package, with CD1 sung in the new English translation and CD2 sung in the original German.
The first gallery to launch this concept was the Gallery at ARC Yinnar in central Gippsland, where Lucy’s Winter Journey art exhibition was launched by Peter Bandy. This opening event also included a brief live performance of two short selections of Schubert’s music by Nathan Lay and Brian Chapman. The following day the entire Winter Journey song cycle was performed in the Gallery, using the new English translation, where the audience was able to see the paintings in full view along the side gallery walls during the performance. This proved to be extremely effective; the audience – aided both by having a full printout of the English translation and by enjoying the astonishingly clear diction of Nathan Lay – was attentive to both the performance and the paintings throughout, and immediately rose almost as one to give the performers a tumultuous standing ovation at the conclusion of the song cycle.
The exhibition then moves to a private venue for a fortnight’s exhibition and a private performance in mid-July, before moving to be exhibited again publicly in the Long Galley at Montsalvat in Eltham from July 31st until August 25th. Although there will be no public recital of Winter Journey at Montsalvat, the English CD of Winter Journey will be played on a continuous loop in the Long Gallery during opening hours.
Quite apart from the artistry of Lucy Chapman and the two musicians, the final 2-CD package is a beautiful piece of work in its own right, thanks to the excellent work of graphic designer Donna Young (reveler.com.au) and printer Rebecca Ledger (theoriginalprinters.com.au).
