This release may give Florian Boesch’s ever-increasing band of admirers a sense of deja vu. It’s only six years since the Austrian baritone recorded Winterreise for Onyx very successfully with the pianist Malcolm Martineau. Returning to the cycle so soon, this time for Hyperion, a label not short on discs of Schubert songs, is hard to explain, especially when there are so many areas of his Lieder repertoire that Boesch has yet to record.
As an outstandingly perceptive and musical artist, Boesch will be constantly refining his interpretation of a work that’s a cornerstone of his repertory, but there’s no sense that his new reading, with the pianist Roger Vignoles, is radically different from its predecessor. It is consistently faster and perhaps less expressionist; there’s more vocal opulence, fewer moments when Boesch bleaches his tone, or pushes it towards Sprechgesang. It’s more mainstream, if you like, but still wonderfully alive to every nuance of the text and of Schubert’s vocal lines. Both versions are utterly convincing.
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