Film Clips	Winter Journey by M. Faust

Few of us would argue that Buffalonians “know what it’s like to be disappointed,” as singer David Pisaro says of his hometown. It’s one reason why the tenor, who has spent most of the past decade working and studying in England, was drawn to Schubert’s song cycle Die Winterreise (The Winter’s Journey). Working from poems written by Wilhelm Muller detailing the mental deterioration of a man who has been jilted by his lover, Schubert fashioned 24 songs that serve as a monument to disappointment. (It was a subject the composer was also familiar with: a year later he was dead at the age of 31, never having found an audience in his lifetime.) Interested in bringing music out of its academic ghetto, Pisaro several years ago hit on an idea to do some “method” research for his performance of the cycle: Just as the traveller in the songs wanders alone though a winter forest, Pisaro would take a walking tour across the northern coast of England, stopping each night to perform. And he would do this in winter, which is not much more pleasant in that area than it is in Western New York. The result of that journey can be seen in Winter Journey, an hour-long film that Werner Herzog might wish he had made: At its best, it seems like something Herzog did make. Documenting his lonely trip with a DV camera (the results indistinguishable from film), Pisaro finds that his attempt to get into the essence of these “24 psychologically disturbed songs” is succeeding better than he had anticipated. A few days of prolonged solitude combined with the effort of trudging along in the snow day after day brings on a depression that informs his performance of these grippingly melancholy songs. Determined that there be a performance every night, he plays to audiences as small as, in once case, a trio of politely attentive farmers. The literal meaning of the German text may elude them, but not the meaning—one characterizes the singer as a “bit of a mournful bugger.” At a later show, another listener praises the “ferocity” of Pisaro’s delivery, adding, “You were worried about him.” As an exercise in knocking music off its lofty perch, Winter Journey ranks with cellist Matt Haimovitz’s barroom performances of the Bach cello suites. And as a film it’s a perfect mixture of music and visual, the details of the winter landscapes creating a receptive mood for this music, as dark a night of the soul as one might ever want to encounter. Winter Journey will have its premiere screening Tuesday night at 9pm on WNED-TV. It’s worth staying home for. (Pisaro and accompanist Quentin Thomas will also perform the Schubert cycle on February 14 at Saint Paul’s Cathedral.)