Brahms, Wolf: Lieder Editor’s Pick

Description

Baritone Florian Boesch is not exactly a household name, but given the high quality of releases like this one, he may get there. He has collaborated for some years with the accompanist Malcolm Martineau, and on this 2025 release, their results are perfectly coordinated to a positively magical degree. The combination of Brahms and Hugo Wolf can be a difficult one, for, as annotator Susan Youens notes, the two composers hated each other, and their styles were profoundly different. However, here the mix works as the program is organized to show Boesch’s expressive range. Listen no further than the opening set of Vier ernste Gesänge, Op. 121, from Brahms. It may seem rash to open a program on this supremely downbeat note, but the songs, biblical although Brahms characteristically avoids the term, set one end of a continuum that runs through Brahms’ much lighter folk material and the deep lyricism of Wolf’s settings of Goethe, Mörike, and Eichendorff. Boesch can be biblically oracular; he can be pleasantly romantic; he can be lightly rustic. It is a truly virtuoso effort, and Martineau follows him every step of the way. One can join Youens in wishing that Brahms and Wolf “could have heard this recital and maybe, just maybe, have realized each other’s worth.” The sound engineering is equal to the performers’ work; the location is given as Crear, Kilberry, Scotland, apparently a wedding venue. This novel location speaks to an effort to find a place that really clicks with the music. ~ James Manheim