Florian Boesch and Malcolm Martineau
Queen’s Hall 15/8/25
Florian Boesch baritone, Malcolm Martineau piano
Two men and a piano. Florian Boesch and Malcolm Martineau deliver today one of the finest performances of this or any Festival, conjuring up in the words Boesch uses of their encore “the whole of human experience”.
This traditional recital of Lieder by Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms is one in which every word, every facial expression, every gesture and every note of music counts, to produce, in the first half, a range of stories and character studies, and in the second, the devastating effect of lost love. With his back to the piano, and without a score, Boesch sings to the audience, his hands clasped. With the most minimal of movement, sometimes opening his hand, clenching his fists, squaring his shoulders, and with subtle changes of expression and intonation, he begins with the well-known Heine setting, ‘The Two Grenadiers’. One soldier favours loyalty to family, the other is intent on serving the Emperor. The martial one wins, the shoulders go back, and the final verses are surprisingly sung to the tune of the ‘Marseillaise’ – Boesch and Martineau relishing the music! His story telling skills are to the fore in the swift-moving tale of the over-weening Belsazar, who proclaims himself, in the song’s climax “King of Babylon”, then the hushed recounting of the “writing on the wall” and the king’s hugger-mugger demise.
Eight tiny songs by Brahms follow, each a life study in miniature: the ardent young lover in ’Sunday’, the cautious admirer in ‘Your blue eyes’, the pitiful homeless man in ‘No House, No Homeland’. Bosch and Martineau play without a break, changing mood and personality in a few notes, a different turn of the head, a change in stance. It’s spell-binding stuff!
After the interval Schumann’s ‘Dichterlieder’ is even better. Boesch admits he was reluctant to tackle this song cycle, until he realised that it was a work of equal partnership between voice and piano: he has always found the ideal collaborator in Malcolm Martineau. In Heine’s fifteen poems, the singer recounts a thwarted love affair. The pianist sometimes anticipates or echoes his emotions but often has the final word. We’re made aware of the arc of this song-cycle, from unsullied love to despair and then stasis and possible recovery. The opening section’s love clichés of May mornings, birdsong, flowers, accompanied by throw-away melodic accompaniment, are repeated but subverted in the last few poems, when the narrator’s despair during the wedding dance is undermined by Martineau’s jolly dance tune. The turning point is the ninth song “I bear no grudges”. Accompanied by the piano’s heavy repeated chords, Boesch is a man broken by anger and disbelief, the repeated phrase becoming increasingly desperate as he remembers his dream with a cry of horror, “I saw the serpent that feeds on your heart”. Does he find a way back? The text says yes – he decides to metaphorically bury his grief, but the music thinks not – the last few songs end without a logical or musical resolution.
A superb concert, warmly applauded, before a very quiet, very simple encore. I’m sure one of you will tell me its name!
Photo credit: Andreas Weiss
