Schubert's song cycle about a traveller who walks through a frozen landscape is, despite flashes of joy, burdened by despair. Written at the end of the composer's short life, it contains some of his most poignant songs: Gute Nacht, Der Lindenbaum, Der Leiermann. Written for tenor voice, often sung by a baritone, it acquires – literally – added depth in this beautiful reading by the Grammy-winning British bass Matthew Rose, who sings it mostly a fourth lower than its original key. Schubert himself called them "terrifying" songs and confessed to his own emotional exhaustion at having written them. Rose and Matthewman, while in full, expressive form, convey that sense of being utterly wrung out.