Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
Hugo Wolf (1860-1903)
Lieder
Florian Boesch (baritone)
Malcolm Martineau (piano)
rec. 2023, Crear, Kilberry, UK
Linn CKD751 [69]
Reviews aren’t all about comparisons, of course, but I got my hands on this disc in the same week that I got Christian Gerhaher’s new disc of Brahms lieder (see review) and, without hearing either, assumed that Gerhaher’s would be easily the finer, given his skill, artistry and reputation in song. As it turns out, however, I much preferred this one (and not just because Gerhaher isn’t on his finest form in his recital). It’s a beautiful collection of songs from a pair of composers who despised one another in real life, as Susan Youens’ excellent booklet notes remind us. If only they could have heard the wonderful things that Boesch and Martineau bring to their music then perhaps Brahms and Wolf could have appreciated one another much more.
I’ve long admired Boesch (see review) for his marvellously expressive voice, combining beauty with strength, and he sounds terrific here. If anything, he is an even more compelling storyteller than Gerhaher, even in the songs that aren’t conventionally narrative ones. A spirit of doom, for example, seems to stalk the Vier ernste Gesänge in their meditations on death, and the effect is grippingly dramatic. The first is ghostly, creepy, Martineau’s piano line moving like a doom-laden tread, while the second is weighed down with dark comprehension but is more lyrical and poetic. There is earnest, head-shaking longing in the third, yet some gorgeous soft singing in second stanza. Finally the mood is changed and uplifted in the final song with its meditation on love, but it’s still dark and a little forbidding.
Impressively, Boesch and Martineau evidently conceive of the Vier ernste Gesänge as a single piece, conveying a purity of mood together with a sense of organic development. You get something similar in Wolf’s Harfenlieder, which are so desperately sad but always poignant, never gloomy. Boesch shades down his voice for Goethe’s desperate tales of longing and loss, so that the effect is terrifically subtle, Martineau’s piano commentating ever so gently on the side.
Every one of the shorter, individual songs is a gem. The Brahms items are mostly folk-inflected, and hearing them in a sitting acts like a tasting menu for the variety of Brahms’ art of song. Sonntag, for example, is warm and gentle, but we get a dazzling, darting piano line for game of blind man’s buff in Blinde Kuh. The blue eyes of Dein blaues Auge are so gorgeously poetic, soft and warm, but there are also songs of desperate sadness like Die Trauernde, all done with sincerity and insight and never a single note of melodrama.
Wolf’s Michelangelo songs are deeply thoughtful, poetically and musically. Boesch and Martineau feel like two sides of one coin, contributing to magnificently satisfying poetic communication. There’s variety on offer too, though, the piano suggesting the emptiness of fame in the first song, while padding around the singer in a sinister manner for the mortality-obsessed second song. There is quiet transcendence to Wanderers Nachtlied and gentle poignancy to Das Verlassene Mägdlein, Boesch’s voice scarcely rising above pianissimo throughout. Yet they manage a big finish with Prometheus, shaking the speakers as the titan shakes his fist against the gods who have imprisoned him.
This was recorded over several days in an isolated location on the Mull of Kintyre, where the sense of remoteness and seclusion must have added to the depth of the artists’ concentration and the intensity of their communication with the music. The results are both marvellous and treasurable; the finest song disc to have come my way in some considerable time.
Simon Thompson
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Contents
Brahms
Vier ernste Gesänge, Op. 121
No. 1, Denn es gehet dem Menschen
No. 2, Ich wandte mich
No. 3, O Tod, wie bitter bist du
No. 4, Wenn ich mit Menschen und mit Engelszungen redete
Sonntag
Blinde Kuh
Sehnsucht
Dein blaues Auge
Die Trauernde
Schwermut
Es steht ein Lind
Da unten im Tale
Wolf
Goethe-Lieder
No. 1, Harfenspieler I
No. 2, Harfenspieler II
No. 3, Harfenspieler III
Three songs on poems by Michelangelo Buonarroti
Wanderers Nachtlied
Das Verlassene Mägdlein
Die Nacht
Denk es, o Seele!
Anakreons Grab
Prometheus
