Song recital

The term 'swan song' dates from Greek mythology, according to which swans who felt their death approaching would sing a final, beautifully sad song. For many, the last work from the pen of a composer radiates a special aura: aged wisdom, transcendence or even nearness to death are qualities we are only too willing to read into such pieces, impressions that are not always able to withstand closer scrutiny. The 31-year-old Franz Schubert did not compile his 14 last songs under the title 'Schwanengesang'. That was a marketing ploy by the publisher Tobias Haslinger, who published them after the composer's death. But even though they do not form an authentic complete set or a self-contained cycle, there is something special about this collection of seven settings after Ludwig Rellstab and six after Heinrich Heine, together with a kind of 'encore', the 'Taubenpost' after Johann Gabriel Seidl. This is certainly the case when such a psychologically preceptive and authentic song interpreter as Florian Boesch is at work: together with Justus Zeyen at the piano, he wholeheartedly plumbs the lyrical caesurae and dark romantic abysses of these works.