First, a confession. I’m an accompanist who loves art song, especially the lieder of Franz Schubert. And I’ve played many, many Schubert songs throughout my long career. However, I had been afraid of tackling one of his most iconic and brilliant songs, Erlkönig. I knew that I wasn’t alone in this respect. It is, of course, meant to be scary. This “Mount Everest” of the accompanying repertoire is daunting on many levels.
Technically, there are all those fast, repeated octaves with very little let-up, certainly a test of one’s endurance. Emotionally, there is much tension and excitement to manage without being derailed by it. And artistically, there are myriad challenges of character, dynamics, ensemble, tempo, color, and more.
Several years ago, I decided to confront my fear, work on the song, and seek advice, encouragement, and inspiration from many of the greatest accompanists/scholars in the field. Ultimately, my goal was to perform it. And I did. This website contains these interviews and will hopefully help others to brave this deeply rewarding work.
Erlkönig is by no means Schubert’s first song, but it is his first published song, his Op. 1, written when he was just 18 years old. It was the song that made him famous and arguably, along with Gretchen am Spinnrade (his Op. 2) changed art song forever with accompaniments that thoroughly brought the drama of the poem vividly to life. It is also worth noting that both of these extraordinary lieder were settings of poems by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, whose poetry Schubert was to set more than any other poet.
Schubert himself wrote four versions of the song which are available to peruse on this website. Each version has notable differences. The one that was published is the one we play today, but it is interesting to note what changed and what stayed the same in the earlier versions. The fact that one version has duple repeated octaves instead of triplets (found in the three other versions) suggests that perhaps Schubert knew how hard this accompaniment was. Ultimately, he kept the triplets (sextuplets actually) and I’ve come to believe that the struggle to play them is in perfect alignment with the life and death struggle embodied in Goethe’s poem. It’s a fascinating project to compare these versions and get a glimpse into Schubert’s creative process.
I began my journey in 2014 after receiving a Graduate School Research grant from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. That summer, I travelled from the Tanglewood Music Festival to Bard College, where a group of distinguished performers presented an entire concert exploring “The Path to Erlkönig.” I then went on to Ann Arbor, Michigan with a stop in Oberlin, Ohio, interviewing various colleagues along the way. In October of that year, my husband, pianist Bill Lutes, and I attended 10 days of the Oxford Lieder Festival, which was dedicated that season to performances of all of Schubert’s Lieder, including performance classes, lectures and other works. Many of the world’s greatest accompanists participated, and I was fortunate to interview quite a few of them. I took a hiatus from the project to deal with some health challenges and then returned to it in the summer of 2021. At this point it became clear to me that the best way to share this wealth of information was to create a website dedicated to the project. I reconnected with the artists I had interviewed back in 2014 and added a few more, all of which are included here.
From these interviews, I was able to glean a few truths: 1) There are people who really can sit down and with minimal preparation, play Erlkönig; 2) Some people never feel completely comfortable with it and use all the “tricks up their sleeves” or use them as needed, depending on the situation; 3) Many have clear practice paths to prepare for performance and have shared them here; and 4) All those interviewed emphasized the importance of focusing on the musical values and the power of the text, rather than being obsessed by the technical demands.
Thank you to the Graduate School of The University of Wisconsin-Madison for generously funding The Erlkönig Project. I am deeply grateful to the artists represented on this website, who chose to freely share their expertise and love of Schubert and Erlkönig with me. I am inspired by all of you. Many thanks also go to my former student, Jason Kutz, who as my Research Assistant helped with all aspects of the project from website design to travel arrangements. I literally could not have done this without him. And finally, my husband Bill Lutes, who loves Schubert as much as I do, deserves every bit of my gratitude and then some for his stalwart support, inspiration and for being my partner in all things Erlkönig and beyond. Thank you!
