... So what, then, did Winterreise mean to us?

At the risk of stating the obvious: it was a journey - albeit a journey with no real destination. The depth

of this Everest-like score offered new insights and fresh layers with every reading. Consequently, there

was never - and still isn't, despite years of preparation and live performances - a real sense of completion,

no point at which we could say we were "finished" studying each lied.

And perhaps the Wanderer's journey is also without destination. A physical trek through a cold and

indifferent, if not openly hostile, nature, it is also a psychological path through the difficult phases of

processing loss - a process that, in truth, never completes. The traveler clings to the pain inflicted by

a society that rejected him and continues to reject him, like the barking dogs announcing his passing,

finding refuge only in the suffering of memory and in each weary step through the snow