What told singer Mattanja van den Bos, a mere mortal who can’t be more than thirty years old if that, that she could attempt to sing Schubert’s great last work, the Winter Songs? It’s usually done by a baritone, especially given that it is a desolate series about a lost female love and wandering around in the cold. People make whole careers out of the piano accompaniment alone. But van den Bos decided she could do both, and how right she was! She strode out in a hiker’s cap carrying a heavy wooden staff, explained her intentions in Dutch, put down her paraphernalia and went to work on the Winter Songs. Apart from singing and playing simultaneously, she even turned the pages herself. It was a tour de force. Every single song – and there is a wide variety, from determined striding to heartbreaking self-scourging and beyond – was rendered with such feeling, but never too much. I learned later that this was Schubert’s very last work, composed when he was dying of syphilis. Editing it was his final task. Cheerful, no, but it did take us into the depths of a certain kind of winter, and in such company! If you’d like to have a taste of just how superb it was, here you are.

The concert was held a venue that to me has always been some quintessence of Amsterdam – the Pianola Museum in the Jordaan. I had known only of the classic “player piano” and thought of it as a somewhat honky-tonk instrument – but in fact they were also used for recording performances, particularly of women performers and composers whose names are generally lost to us now. The Museum is packed with treasures: not only the instruments themselves but also 30,000 long paper rolls of recordings in their cardboard cases. It’s an Amsterdam institution which is kept alive by a tenacious group of obsessed volunteers. Your first stop after the ticket booth is a tiny, dark wood bar, with the elegant performance space beyond. Of course you are welcome to take in your glass of wine or coffee. Your first impression is of a shadowy, rich space with a high red velvet curtain portioning off part of the space and riches all around you in the form of display cases and instruments at different levels. The footprint of the room is probably only about 15 x 35, but it is a full storey and a half high, with the upper reaches accessible by a winding staircase. Up there are the thousands of paper rolls in specially made cabinets. Don’t miss it if you come to Amsterdam!