Nov 30, 2010

A 24-Pack of Schubert


I missed the wine-fueled theatrical song recycle Three Pianos the first time around, but won't make the mistake again. I had a chance to sit down for a festive chat about song craft with the show's three creators a few weeks ago for Time Out. Probably my fave bit, in which Rick Burkhardt addresses the appeal of Schubert's incredibly bleak song cycle Winterreise:
“It’s a paradox, and no one really knows why this is, but sad people don’t like listening to happy music,” Burkhardt notes. “You’d think that if you could fix your emotions by listening to happy tunes, you would just do it, but there are a lot of studies that show that when you’re sad, the thing that you want is something that fits that, and expresses those feelings. It can be really exhilarating: ‘Oh, I’m in a terrible mood, and Schubert just nailed it!’ ”
Amen to that.

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