Michael Wollny Reimagines Schubert's Winterreise on New Solo Piano Album

German pianist Michael Wollny has released eine winterreise (a winter journey), a solo piano album built on Franz Schubert's song cycle Winterreise. The ACT Music release came out on Oct. 30, according to the weekly new-release round-up from retailer Presto Music.

ACT describes the album as a re-imagining of Schubert's cycle that "goes way beyond the original." Alongside fragments of Schubert, it includes newly composed passages, free improvisation and motifs from three songs by other artists: Björk's "Aurora," Kate Bush's "Snowflake" and Louis Cole's "Cloud of Flies."

"The themes of Schubert's 'Winterreise' have the capacity to speak with astonishing immediacy," Wollny says in the label's notes. "It's about the condition of being alone, but also about love fulfilled and love disappointed." He adds that the music has accompanied him his whole life and that he has long worked Schubert motifs into his own writing.

Like the original cycle, the album is a sequence of short character pieces that add up to a single narrative arc. Wollny compares his approach to staging a play: "There is a choreography of moods here, a precise sequence of scenes, but there's also a kind of dream logic between the songs," with elements from one piece resurfacing later in a different form.

According to ACT, each borrowed song has a personal link to the project. Wollny calls Björk's Vespertine an important compass and notes that the original "Aurora" used samples of footsteps in snow. "Snowflake," the opening track of Kate Bush's 50 Words for Snow, is his favorite winter song. Louis Cole's "Cloud of Flies," the label says, describes the moment of realizing one has missed out on one's own life.

The album was recorded at the Reitstadel, a 16th-century hall in Neumarkt in der Oberpfalz, Bavaria, by engineer Martin Ruch, who also mixed and mastered it. Wollny produced the record himself, with ACT's Andreas Brandis as executive producer. Wollny says the room's "crystalline clarity" suited the winter theme and that the piano sound required no dynamic processing.

He also describes the project as one of the most demanding of his career, with "moments of great enthusiasm, but also deep doubts," and ties it to current debates about the human element in art. "Writing a prompt takes just a few seconds; artistic and personal development takes a lifetime," he says.

The release follows Wollny's selection earlier this month for a 2026 Bavarian Art Prize. Eine winterreise is available on CD, vinyl and digital formats from ACT.