Schubert’s Winterreise – the composer’s great psychodrama in song – ends devastatingly. Der Leiermann conjures a chilling vision of a hurdy-gurdy man. Alone beyond the village he plays his melancholy tune, luring the narrator to him – perhaps also to his death? The haunting song, with its anchoring drone, begs for colours the piano can only suggest. Presumably that was the seed for this unusual collaboration between veteran US baritone Thomas Hampson and Latvian accordionist Ksenija Sidorova.
You can see the logic that swaps piano for accordion and frames the Schubert with songs by Kurt Weill and a tango by Piazzolla: this is street music with its face washed and hair brushed, invited into the salon, the cabaret, the opera house.
