LIEDERABEND: FLORIAN BOESCH / MALCOLM MARTINEAU by Various, čet. 05 maj. 2022, Od (2022/2022), Elbphilharmonie, Hamburg, Germany

The Wiener Zeitung describes the baritone Florian Boesch as an »intense storyteller whose voice could not be smoother«. For years, the Austrian singer has been one of the most sought-after song interpreters worldwide. A star rarely comes alone: ​​he is accompanied on the piano by the well-known pianist Malcolm Martineau, who already delighted the Hamburg audience in 2019 in a recital with the soprano Anne Schwanewilms. Most recently, Florian Boesch and his Scottish piano partner made the headlines of record reviews with their Schubert recordings. In this concert, the baritone now devotes himself to the music of Ernst Krenek. With the »Travel Book from the Austrian Alps«, an early song cycle by the composer, who was strongly influenced by Schubert, is on the program - a captivating testimony to Krenek's versatile musical expressiveness. The work, completed in 1929, is often interpreted as Krenek's declaration of war against the radical modernism of his colleagues such as Arnold Schönberg - "to show that the old musical vocabulary has not yet been exhausted," explained the composer himself, who left National Socialist Germany a good ten years later emigrated to the USA. Anyone who hears Florian Boesch with this song cycle will probably agree with Krenek: It is not for nothing that the successful singer describes these musical postcards from his compatriot as the »most important song cycle of the 20th century«.