Michael Wollny: 'eine winterreise' is out – solo concerts in Frankfurt and Nuremberg

Michael Wollny's new solo album 'eine winterreise' comes out on ACT on Friday, 30 October. In it, the pianist reimagines Franz Schubert's song cycle 'Winterreise': fragments of Schubert sit alongside newly composed and freely improvised passages, plus motifs from Kate Bush, Björk and Louis Cole. Wollny recorded it in the Reitstadel in Neumarkt in the Upper Palatinate, whose 'crystalline clarity', he says, completely fits the album's winter theme. "It's about the condition of being alone, but also about love fulfilled and love disappointed," Wollny told Jazzfuel.

Writing for Paris-Move ahead of the release, Thierry De Clemensat praised the album as music full of grace and compositional daring; Wollny does not turn Schubert into a museum piece. Live, the pianist presents the programme solo on 3 December in the Mozart Saal of the Alte Oper Frankfurt, on 19 February 2027 at the opera house of the Staatstheater Nürnberg and on 20 February 2027 in the Hospitalkirche in Schwäbisch Hall (JazzTime series). Tickets cost 30 to 60 euros in Frankfurt, from 55.75 euros in Nuremberg and from 35 euros in Schwäbisch Hall.