Francois Loup's 'Winterreise,' Exquisitely Chilled

Franz Schubert's "Die Winterreise" ("The Winter's Journey") -- a dark, bleak, 80-minute examination of human misery that was one of the last things ever written by the mortally ill composer -- falls somewhere between a traditional song cycle and an operatic monodrama. On Sunday afternoon at the University of Maryland's Clarice Smith Center, the bass-baritone Francois Loup had the inspired audacity to transform the score into performance art.

Loup and his pianist, Santiago Rodriguez, both dressed in early 19th-century costumes. Paintings by Caspar David Friedrich were projected in the background, a different one for every song. A line-by-line English translation from the German flashed on screens set to either side of the stage. And, at the end of the devastating final song, "Der Leiermann," Loup started to walk off into the darkness before stopping to gaze in reverence at the young Schubert's portrait, after which the lights came down.

Yes, it all sounds a little tricky -- and yes, "Winterreise" can do just fine by itself. Still, such was the seriousness of Loup's conception that I found myself mostly convinced. The projected translations undoubtedly made the experience more intimate for those who neither knew the songs nor understood German; the paintings were well-suited to the moods of the moment; and even the antique costumes did no real harm.

What made the afternoon was "Winterreise" itself, of course. It is hard to think of many more unrelentingly pessimistic works -- some of the Greek dramas, perhaps, or "Chinatown" or Malcolm Lowry's "Under the Volcano." There is no real light in "Winterreise" -- even the familiar and uncharacteristically gentle "Der Lindenbaum" is only a memory of light. What Schubert has given us here is a meticulous, unflinching and encyclopedic study of the darkest grays and black.

With the exception of his wonderful low notes, which sometimes sound as though they were borrowed from a pipe organ, Loup is more likely to win an audience over with his intelligence and musicianship than with the sheer sound of his voice. His tone will never be mistaken for that of somebody like Dmitri Hvorostovsky, for example, and one senses the law of gravity coming into play when he takes on the higher notes. But few of us go to "Winterreise" in search of vocal grandeur; far better to hear this work from somebody who, like Loup, combines melodies, meanings and the sounds of words themselves into such a natural and seemingly inevitable totality. From start to finish, we were full partners with Loup on his "winter's journey" -- and his stories seemed our stories.

Rodriguez was a splendid partner, whether roaring through heroic passages or emphasizing Schubert's harmonic daring with little pointillist stabs.