Favourite historic recording. Harry Plunket Green Hurdy Gurdy Man - Schubert Der Leiermann - W...

This is simply one of the most moving recordings I know.  Plunket Green was an important concert singer - most famous for taking part in the first performance of The Dream of Gerontius - and an influential teacher and writer on singing.

He was born in 1865, so he was almost 70 when he recorded this - the last song of Winterreise.  Much of the voice has gone but there is enough left to support the superb insight into the way that the words and music work as one.  Somehow the fact that this is in English (albeit with an unmistakable Irish accent) makes it all the more vivid.

Winterreise is a young man's journey, ending up in despair as he meets the hurdy gurdy man.  Plunkett Green seems here to become the hurdy gurdy man himself.

I got to know Winterreise at University and one of my guides was Richard Capel's book on Schubert's songs.  This would now be regarded as a very old fashioned book with too much description and not enough analysis, but I think that it still has valuable things to say, and certainly at the time I found it a very good companion.   The commentary on this song has stayed in my memory for what must now be the best part of 40 years.

A wonder is reserved for the last page of the ' Winterreise.' 
Given a thousand guesses, no one could have said that the 
last song would be at all like this. Miiller must be given his 
due. Der Leiermann was an inspired ending. The madman 
meets a beggar, links with him his fortune ; and the two 
disappear into the snowy landscape. Schubert must be 
given his due. He realized the beauty of the proffered subject. 
No one else would have taken it quite like this. Almost 
anyone else would have overdone it. We say that such a 
man was worthy of any gift. How this one was compensated 
in the acceptance ! The result is pure poetry. The lamenta- 
tions of seventy pages have died away. We may read any- 
thing or nothing much into the cleared scene. All that 
happens is the drone and tinkling of the hurdy-gurdy. The 
bass A and its fifth sound throughout the piece (a device 
here renewed from Schubert's use of it in the Pastoral Melody 
in ' Rosamunde '). The hurdy-gurdy's two-bar tune enters 
intermittently between the wanderer's half -numb sentences, 
which strike us strangely after all that has gone before. 
Only near the end is there a glimmer of warmth. 

An almost toneless song. But what a task to set a singer 
at the end of an hour and half ! Der Leiermann has had 
unforgettable interpreters, like George Henschel and Plunket 
Greene. The ' Winterreise ' as a whole awaits one. No 
one in our time has had quite all the qualities of heart, head, 
and voice. A fine voice is wanted to hold the attention for 
so long, but the most musical tone will pall here if it is not 
the servant of the imagination. The singer must have 
sympathy with the passionate temper. For the dry of heart, 
the ' Winterreise ' might as well not exist

That is fine writing and an ideal introduction to this recording