R Schumann Dichterliebe; Gedichte von Justinus Kerner, Op. 35 Florian Boesch (baritone), Malcolm Martineau (piano) Linn Records CKD 695 63:28 mins
This is a deeply expressive account of Dichterliebe. Indeed, it’s the combination of questioning intellect and feeling that makes Boesch and Martineau’s version of this cycle of Heinrich Heine poems so distinctive. The composer becomes the poet in love and, like Heine, Schumann dismisses the usual paraphernalia – flowers and nightingales and the stars above. It’s all a great deal crueler: indeed we are traduced by the very language of Romantic love itself. The postlude to ‘Wenn ich in deine Augen seh’ hints at tragedy and Boesch and Martineau turn the insidious little waltz that flirts its way through ‘Das ist ein Flöten und Geigen’ into a bitter reproach. Boesch drains all colour from his voice in ‘Am leuchtenden Sommermorgen’ as Martineau stretches the wandering arpeggios in the piano part. If there is forgiveness to be heard at the end of the final song when Schumann reprises the melody from ‘Am leuchtenden Sommermorgen’, can we really believe it?
Schumann’s 12 settings of poems by Justinus Kerner were composed after the composer’s marriage. Here they are ordered by Florian Boesch to tell another story of Romantic love interruptus. Filled with some of Schumann’s most winning melodies they lack perhaps the sharp emotional edge of Dichterliebe, although Boesch and Martineau make the very best of them, finding delight in ‘Stille Liebe’ and an unexpected intensity in ‘Stille Tränen’ with its surging piano part and the voice full of grief. But love is still for the birds.
Christopher Cook