Patrick Parker l heldentenor

Wanderer’s Journey

In 2026, Patrick Parker and pianist Bina Kumar Karpisova embark upon a massive four-part saga of German Romantic song cycles by Schubert and Brahms, inspired by Wagner’s Ring cycle: “The Wanderer's Year – A Journey of Rejection, Hope, Love, and Farewell.”

We begin in Winter 2026 with Schubert’s Winterreise. Our hero, The Wanderer, has been rejected by the person he thought he would marry and spend his life with, and he trudges alone in the winter snow, half-psychotic, trying to process his loss while talking to birds and ice and stone and frozen rivers. It ends in a question: we are not sure what actually happens to our hero.

Thus, its sequel: In Spring 2026 we hear Brahms’ Die schöne Magelone cycle. Spring is a time of new beginnings, and indeed, our Wanderer has finished questioning whether he wants to live or die, found a job as a knight, and has found a fair maiden. He is on solid ground, and we hear his triumph in the heroic lieder. In the lyric lieder, we hear a sort of abiding peace that only resides from people who survive massive challenges and come out on the other side more of who they truly are, with more wisdom, peace, and freedom than before.

In Summer 2026, we hear Schubert’s Die Schöne Müllerin, a cycle full of natural beauty and young love. This cycle is the most youthful and lyric of the 4-part saga, and in this year-long Wanderer’s Journey it stands as a flashback, as a prequel to who the hero was before Winterreise. We learn that in The Wanderer’s youth, he met a woman he loved, yet another man arrived and stole her. The Wanderer’s heart is broken and tries to drowns himself in a brook. And although his body is rescued from the river, it is in this state of suicidality over his lost love that he began the Winterreise that we inaugurated the saga with.

Finally, we end the 4-part saga appropriately in Autumn 2026 with Schubert’s Schwanengesang. Written in the last year of Schubert’s life and compiled into cyclic form by his publisher, this is a collection of songs that are not always about death, but do have commonality: reflection, ending, farewell. Farewell to youth, farewell to love, farewell to dreams and hopes, farewell to things that no longer serve us as we grow into more of who we truly are, and ultimately, farewell to ourselves, to life.