EIF Review: Ian Bostridge & Steven Osborne

description: British singer Ian Bostridge joins Edinburgh-born pianist Steven Osborne for Franz Schubert’s visionary song cycle Schwanengesang.

As song-cycles go, Franz Schubert’s last, Schwanengesang, is a bit mental. Other than being penned by the same poet, Ludwig Rellstab, What tortured thread could possibly link the first two songs, “Liebesbotschaft” (“Message of love”) and “Kriegers Ahnung” (“Warrior’s foreboding”)? The former is a pretty request to a river to send a message to a lover, whilst the latter is a tormented cry against certain doom in a battle to come.

Tenor, Ian Bostridge, one of the foremost living interpreters of Schubert, simply dives into the emotions of each song. The non-sequential emotional subtexts of each are no barrier.

“Bostridge has an excellent voice for Schubert’s melodic adventures, pure and powerful, and capable of great meaning. He was perhaps just one snarl short of eating the stage and the piano, but you can’t fault his commitment.”

The result is a wild journey from joy to black depression, and onwards to abundant cheer. We’ve all seen cinematic serial killers with a more stable narrative journey, and the result was rather entertaining.

Bostridge has an excellent voice for Schubert’s melodic adventures, pure and powerful, and capable of great meaning. He was perhaps just one snarl short of eating the stage and the piano, but you can’t fault his commitment.

Steven Osborne, a fine concert pianist, proved an excellent accompanist throughout. Very much the calm to Bostridge’s emotional storm, he matched the singer’s energy with immense skill and nimble fingers.

Before diving into the final 6 songs in the cycle, based on the poetry of Heinrich Heine, Bostridge and Osborne diverged into 4 other Schubert offerings. These were pretty, and a little more emotionally stable.

That wasn’t to last, and the first notes of “Der Atlas” very much brought the weight of the world down onto Bostridge’s shoulders. By the time the concert reached “Der Doppelgänger” (“The double”), Bostridge was so deep in the misery of the love-lorn singer that he almost spoke the words at times.

Fortunately, an encore of Schubert’s “Nacht und Träume” (“Night and Dreams) D. 827, ended things on a much prettier and mellifluous note.

For me, the concert was just a little too wildly melodramatic to raise the hairs on the back of my next, but it was certainly entertaining! Osborne’s playing was a continual delight throughout, and Bostridge certainly left nothing in the green room.