Melbourne, Australia. October 2017.

fm (Maurizio) and Alex have finished another day of work, they’re about to complete the recording of Pankow’s new album, “Never trust a white man”.
They have a beer and decide to watch Roberto Andó’s movie “Le Confessioni”. They both fall asleep on the couch, only to wake up towards the end of the movie and watch the closing credits. Suddenly, they’re both struck by a hauntingly beautiful piece of music… it’s “der Leiermann” the last song of Franz Schubert’s masterpiece Winterreise (Winter Journey)…they both go to bed with this melody stuck in their brain…
The next morning fm quickly puts together a base of der Leiermann, and Alex tentatively tries to record the vocal parts…they listen to it…it sounds great… completely different from anything they tried in the past, a new path, a new adventure, more daring and challenging than ever…
Shortly after, fm catches the plane back to Italy, but not before agreeing with Alex that they will try to record a few more songs from Schubert’s cycle… fm starts sending base after base, some with a piano, some totally electronic, and Alex listens to Fischer-Dieskau, Bostridge, Quasthoff and tries to learn as much as he can…it becomes a total obsession, a full immersion into the words of Wilhelm Müller and the music of Franz Schubert…can two non-musicians, with radically different  experiences, from another historical dimension, do justice to an absolute masterpiece of the romantic era?
They read all the books they can find on the song cycle, they even find copies of Schubert’s original sheets…Poetry, philology, philosophy become one with music…
For the next 4 years Alex will sing and record every song at least 10, maybe 20 times, and fm will listen to his interpretations and patiently ask him to just ‘do it again!’…
fm will try different solutions for the musical arrangements, experimenting to no end, delving into the most minute detail of each song, never happy, never satisfied, never at peace with himself, until…

It’s 2022, winter is upon us. Franz Schubert wrote the music when he was dying of syphilis, Wilhelm Müller died without being able to listen to the finished opus. 195 years after its first release, we have decided to take a leap into the unknown and put out our own version of Franz Schubert’s Winterreise. It has been a labour of love, pain, frustration, obsessive compulsive stubbornness…a tale full of wonder and suprises, a journey into life, decay and winter that has taken us to the edge of madness…and beyond.
We gave it all, everything we’ve got, there’s not much left in the old tank. fm has curated evey aspect of the work, like the artistic director, the conductor, the creative mastermind that he is.
Alex has tried to sing without distorting or perverting the natural beauty of the words and the harmonies. Did we honour the legacy of Schubert and Müller? Did we create something respectful, worth listening to, memorable in any way?

Wunderlicher Alter,
soll ich mit dir geh’n?
Willst zu meinen Liedern
deine Leier dreh’n?

Curious old fellow,
shall I go with you?
When I sing my songs,
will you play your hurdy-gurdy too?

fm & Alex Spalck

pic by Dr. Debra Parkinson