Winterreise, D.911, is a song cycle for voice and piano, completed in 1827 by Austrian composer Franz Schubert (1797 - 1828). The cycle consists of twenty four songs on texts by Wilhelm Müller, about a young man traveling through a winter landscape, lost in more ways than one. A dramatic and complex work, resigned and incredibly bleak, it is widely seen as the best song cycle of all time. More information can be found in the excellent Wikipedia article. The average playing time is 56 minutes (AllMusic), but that should be closer to 70 imo. I have a number of versions, of which I have a preference for the one by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Gerald Moore on a Deutsche Grammophon CD.
