Song Recital: Florian Boesch / Malcolm Martineau

Florian Boesch and his Scottish piano partner last made record-review headlines with their Schubert recordings. In this concert, the baritone turns his attention to the music of Ernst Krenek, a composer who was heavily influenced by Schubert. Tonight’s recital features the »Reisebuch aus den österreichischen Alpen«, an early song cycle by Krenek and a delightful example of his versatile talent for musical expression.

The work, which Krenek completed in 1929, is often seen as his declaration of war on the radical modernism of contemporaries like Arnold Schönberg – »to show that the old musical vocabulary is not exhausted yet«, as the composer himself explained some ten years before he emigrated from Nazi Germany to the USA. Anyone listening to Florian Boesch perform this song cycle will likely agree with Krenek: not without reason does the successful baritone describe this set of musical postcards by his countryman as »the most important 20th century song cycle«.