Schubert: Winterreise

Florian Boesch, baritone; Malcolm Martineau, piano

Franz Schubert
Winterreise

Florian Boesch's debut disc on ONYX was the highly acclaimed Schumann Heine Lieder (ONYX4041), and he again teams up with Malcolm Martineau for the journey through the bleak and wintry landscape of Schubert's Winterreise.
Composed in 1827, work on the settings of Wilhem Muller made Schubert agitated and disturbed according to friends. Indeed the songs shocked his friends when first heard - so powerful is the emotional content of the music that it still has the ability to shock and move the listener. The journey starts with 'Goodnight', as our traveller walks away from us into the moonlit snowy landscape. At the end of the cycle 'The Signpost' he takes the path to his death.
'His acccount of the Liederkreis is a slow-burning, intropsective affair. But he can be totally forthright, as in the ballad Balthazar, which has a tremendous dramatic presence. Having an accompanist as perceptive and exquisitely musical as Malcolm Martineau is a big asset, too. These are lieder perfomances of a very high order indeed.' The Guardian ****
'The Austrian baritone Florian Boesch, a regular on the opera circuit, reveals himself here as a Schumann natural, flickering with finely controlled mood in and out of the shadows of 25 poems by Heinrich Heine. The shadows are alternately inviting and ominous. Boesch, partnered by Malcolm Martineau's sensitive pianism, evokes them in vocal brush strokes that range in texture from velvet to hemp.' Evening Standard *****

Price: $21.98