Winterreise (Winter Journey) in the Pitäjänmäki Village Church, the 6th of February, 2022

 There has been a long break in my writings, but I suppose, Covid has broken the habits of many of us. Covid restrictions have cancelled and postponed a lot of performances and even when the performances have taken place, there have been tons of different types of restrictions and writing about the performances has not been the first thing on my mind. But now new the hope of both the performers and the audiences returning to normal rhythm of live music has made me decide that I will start my stories again - beginning from the first concert in 2022.

The first musical experience of the year is not an opera, but a performance of Franz Schubert’s “Winterreise” in the Pitäjänmäki Village Church (which is actually not a church, but a private house).  “Winterreise” (Winter journey) is perhaps the best known of the song cycles by Schubert and this time it was sung by baritone Aarne Pelkonen and accompanied by Juho Alakärppä on a fortepiano.

I was really looking forward to the concert because of several reasons. First of all, I had during Christmas holiday listened to Arttu Kataja’s superb record of “Winterreise” (accompanied by Pauliina Tukiainen) and second of all I also read during Epiphany Ian Bostridge’s book “Winterreise”, where he goes through all 24 songs of it. And third of all, due to Covid restrictions my last live music experience had been the Finnish National Opera’s ”La Traviata” in December, so I was really yearning for live music already. And finally, since Aarne Pelkonen is especially known as a specialist of lied music, there was grounds to expect a great performance.

And the performance was good. Pelkonen’s voice rang beautifully and Alakärppä’s playing was magnificent. The soft tone of the fortepiano created a very special atmosphere to the whole cycle. But on the other hand, I have to admit that the extraordinarily high level of Arttu Kataja’s record had set an extremely high target level and compared to that, Peltonen’s performance lacked a little something. Only after the short tuning break in the middle of the cycle Pelkonen seemed to get deeper feeling to the songs. The audience applauded with vigor to the performers, so I am sure I was not the only one, who had really missed live music.