25.01.2021

FLORIAN BOESCH – Artist in Residence at Wigmore Hall & Teatro de la Zarzuela in Madrid

Among the broad-ranging repertoire of the baritone Florian Boesch, the art song plays a special role, as it is his personal passion. As Artist in Residence, Boesch presents himself this season at Wigmore Hall and at the Teatro de la Zarzuela in Madrid. One core piece of the first song recital will be Frank Martin’s Jedermann Monologues. The francophone Swiss composer has the soloist in his Jedermann Monologues portray the psychological development of the rich man from initial hubris to the fear of death, all the way to the relinquishing of all earthly goods by the redeemed sinner. A challenge which gives the character actor Florian Boesch ample opportunity to vocally illuminate the abyss of the soul of Everyman in this “play of the rich man’s dying”.

During the second evening of this Artist-in-Residence series, Florian Boesch presents his subtly personal approach to Schubert’s Winterreise. In it, with extraordinary expressivity and narrative forcefulness, Boesch aims for an individual realization of a work that is based on reality experienced: as a volunteer infantry guardsman in the Prussian army, Wilhelm Müller was quickly made a lieutenant, and equally quickly dishonourably discharged when he fell in love with a Jewish merchant’s wife in Brussels. Bereft of all hope, Müller made his way back from Brussels to Berlin, in the middle of winter and on foot. Schubert, already at death’s door, transposed Müller’s basic emotions into music: in the wanderer’s heart, there is permanent winter; only at night does he recall happier days, shifting between torpor and a hopeless longing for a better life. Reviewers so far have unanimously praised Florian Boesch’s extraordinary expressivity and narrative forcefulness.

Ernst Krenek’s song cycle Reisebuch aus den österreichischen Alpen is the focus of the third evening. The song cycle is about the loss of home(land), about nostalgia and lost innocence, its main topos being the search for a homeland, both in the personal, social and philosophical sense. Florian Boesch, who has recorded this cycle for the label Hyperion and received accolades from audience and press alike, approaches these songs with an appropriate mixture of emotions and resigned, ironic distance.