FREMD BIN ICH EINGEZOGEN
A culturally diverse cycle
about loneliness and encounters
Based on Schubert’s Winterreise
and Persian classical music
asambura intertwines Schubert’s work with Persian poetry and lamentations about estrangement, flight, and loneliness, creating a new, melancholic cycle with a glimmer of hope: The yearning for belonging and togetherness connects people from different cultures on their personal Winterreise.
“Fremd bin ich eingezogen, fremd zieh ich wieder aus” (I entered a stranger, and a stranger I leave)—the homelessness of so many refugees becomes the central theme, bringing our reinterpreted song cycle into sharp relevance today.
Ein Gefangener im Fernweh bin ich hier
und keine Stimme spendet Trost mir.
Lass uns nehmen was wir brauchen
und uns auf einen Weg ohne Rückkehr machen
um zu erfahren
ob überall der Himmel die
gleiche Farbe mag tragen.
(Übertragung nach Mehdi Akhavan-Sales)
vocalists • Yannick Spanier & Toktam Moslehi
composing reimaging • Maximilian Guth (based on Schubert’s Winterreise)
concept • Maximilian Guth & Ehsan Ebrahimi
world premiere • 2018 • Messiaen Festival Görlitz
“A moving and bold album that broadens horizons and ears!”
Bayerischer Rundfunk
“The instrumental moments of the intercultural Winterreise unfold a very unique pull. The way the piece evokes Schubert, drifts towards Eastern meditation, and then returns to the familiar melodies, Maximilian Guth has composed this not only with imagination but also with great respect.”
Marcus Stäbler. NDR KULTUR
“It is fantastic music with the highest emotional intensity! The colors that Maximilian Guth and the asambura ensemble create are breathtaking.”
Prof. Dr. Eckart Altenmüller
“This music dismantles cultural axioms and combines them anew. It challenges us once again to see our personal fate in a more global context and provides food for thought about society and humanity. Through its intercultural and interreligious lineup, the asambura ensemble can approach the interpretation with such a high degree of empathy and vulnerability that the musical performance and the material not only become credible but leave me deeply moved.”
Stephan Pillhofer. Orchesterblog
“A perfect fusion of musical cultures. The asambura ensemble brings out subtle nuances, presenting itself as a cohesive whole where every voice has its place. Artistic worlds enter into dialogue and merge with each other. What a brilliant idea to juxtapose thematically similar texts from completely different cultures and musically connect them into a single work. Here, a chance emerges to add an entirely new dimension to classical music and make it accessible to new audiences. With this piece, Guth has created a true masterpiece that could not be more relevant. The music is sorrowful, beautiful, moving—and hopeful.”
Leonie Bünsch. Klassik begeistert
“The asambura ensemble consists of masters of musical alchemy, and they almost find the philosopher’s stone. Strangeness, disappointment, and longing are here transformed from the wounds of a monomaniacal loner into a philanthropic dialogue of songs. Yannick Spanier for Schubert and Mehdi Saei with Iranian ghazals sing as vocal twins, both bass-baritones. The non-European musical idioms do not seek competition with the hauntingly beautiful arrangements of Schubert’s lieder, whose nearly ubiquitous presence transforms the shock effect into a broad and even comforting rhapsody.”
Neue Musikzeitung Magazin NMZ
“In light of the homelessness of so many people fleeing, this newly interpreted song cycle is highly relevant.”
Hannover Kunst
“The intercultural reinterpretation by Maximilian Guth and the asambura ensemble blends Persian soundscapes into Schubert’s sense of alienation, thereby opening up an entirely new cosmos.”
neue Musikzeitung nmz
“The intercultural Winterreise by the asambura ensemble is not only a musical stroke of luck. It reminds us, both metaphorically and concretely, of the wonderful quality of people being able to offer each other a home. With strength, music, and words, the intercultural Winterreise also appeals to the responsibility that we privileged ones have: to welcome the strangers who have entered. The enrichment found in this is conveyed as powerfully as only music can.”
Friederike Ankele | Director of the Cultural Office Hannover
“This connection between Schubert’s loneliness and homelessness with the melancholic sounds of the Near East was deeply moving for many.”
Sächsische Zeitung
“It is as if one is looking at Schubert’s music through a prism, experiencing it in a completely new way. Conversely, it’s the same: against the backdrop of Schubert’s sounds, one hears the music from the Persian cultural sphere with entirely different ears. Maximilian Guth masterfully and sensitively merges everything into a cohesive whole. The quality of both the composition and the ensemble is outstanding, and I wholeheartedly congratulate them on the success of this project!”
Prof. Christoph Poppen
“It begins like an improvisation on the most beautiful melodies from the Winterreise, exotically grounded with string and plucked instruments from another world. Here is Schubert’s motif of the crow, there a Persian song with its characteristic sighs and melismas, and in the joyful sound of the clarinet, Klezmer music resonates. When the thudding of the prepared piano introduces a hint of new music, the friction of contrasts is complete.
The intercultural asambura ensemble, led by composer Maximilian Guth, has filtered out the themes of alienation, loneliness, and being on the move from Schubert’s most famous song cycle and reinterpreted them as a sonic commentary on our time of significant movements of displaced persons.”
Susanne Benda. fono forum
“Schubert’s Winterreise has been inter-culturally and sonically continued by the musicians of the asambura ensemble with their diverse musical experiences. In doing so, Maximilian Guth’s reinterpretation awakens the longing for home and belonging that connects us across all cultures and eras. Musically, Guth presents the panoramic vision of an encounter on equal terms, in which the temperaments of the other remain both recognizable and palpable.”
Maher Farkouh – musicologist
“‘I entered as a stranger,’ says Franz Schubert, with lyrics by Wilhelm Müller. ‘A prisoner of longing, I am here,’ in the Persian poem by Mehdi Akhavan Sales. The parallels are evident, as both protagonists are kindred spirits in their eternal wandering.
It is a play between the familiar and the foreign that Maximilian Guth and the asambura ensemble celebrate with great sensitivity. They succeed so well that the musical cultures seamlessly merge.
With the 19-member asambura ensemble, Maximilian Guth has not only deeply internalized Schubert’s cosmos but has also expanded it.”
Susanne Schmerda. Bayerischer Rundfunk
“The work captivates and draws the listener in. Soundscapes are replaced by rhythmically-percussive passages. The transitions are seamless and organic. In the end, nearly 80 minutes of playtime pass by in the blink of an eye.”
Christian Helming. Mindener Tageblatt
“The asambura ensemble interprets its version of the cycle in a decidedly more radical way by reading the story of the homeless wanderer as a reflection on the refugee movements of our time. Schubert can withstand this. No, more than that, his songs break free from their romantic shell.”
Susanne Benda | Stuttgarter Zeitung
“I find the transition between ‘The Last Hope’ and ‘Signpost’ particularly moving. There, the music once again drifts between different sound worlds before sneaking back into Schubert’s footsteps. The asambura ensemble enchants once again with its instrumental singing and a fascinating richness of color.”
Marcus Stäbler. NDR KULTUR
CD
collaborations

The concert by the asambura ensemble tells of humankind,
of heaven and earth, of the in-between space,
of home and foreignness.
Being on the move, being alone, being lonely,
under a sky sometimes blue-gray-black,
sometimes under stars. The singer’s voice,
as deep as the sea, as clear as the air.
With their vocal body, they paint the crow,
their loneliness, their dreams, and the hurdy-gurdy man.
Everything is true in these moments.
The singer sings of pain in a foreign language,
with foreign sounds. Together, they are both familiar
and strange to us in their language, yet together. In the composition,
familiar and foreign melodies and sounds,
with familiar and unfamiliar instruments,
create a cosmos in an unusual, captivating, and wondrous way.
Schubert’s Winterreise and the Persian songs
form a synthesis in this concert.
In both worlds, the theme of home is brought to life,
interculturally and newly interpreted,
a universal and current topic that connects us,
presented in a touching and hopeful way
by the asambura ensemble’s composition.
– Bärbel Kasperek |2022]