Loewe: the German word for lion. There was Lerner and Loewe, of course. Except that the 20th century example of Loewe is rarely mentioned on its own. But there is another Loewe who also once moved in musical circles, a century before Frederick Loewe started collaborating with Alan Jay Lerner on Broadway musicals. Johann Carl Gottfried Loewe was born just a few weeks before Schubert, at the fag-end of the 18th century. He shared close friendships with Mendelssohn, Weber and Schumann, and in 1847 on a visit to London he sang at court while Prince Albert turned the pages. Yes, he was a singer too, as well as being the composer of more than four hundred ballads and songs.
In this Wigmore Hall recital, the Austrian baritone Florian Boesch chose a generous selection from Loewe’s output to contrast with two song cycles in similar vein by Mahler. Boesch has a warmly vibrant voice which is almost infinite in its range: it can cajole, caress, cry, hiss, scream, weep and whisper, with a thrilling power to make glasses in a cabinet shatter in an instant. These are the qualities that a natural storyteller needs in order to make the narrative threads come alive and entrance as well as terrify an audience. Singing the complete recital from memory helps enormously too. Here, the words were not modulated via a music-stand or open score, but came direct from the heart. Like all great singers, Boesch knows how to use his entire body to give point and emphasis to each shift in the emotional underpinning.
The first group of five songs were all examples of the medieval heroic ballad, picked up and revivified by the German Romantics in their eager exploration of horror, romance and the supernatural. Journeys too feature prominently, paralleling the life of a strolling minstrel. Such as Herr Oluf, where the words are drawn from Johann Gottfried Herder’s translation of a Danish ballad. The dramatically forceful piano introduction, realised by Boesch’s wonderfully expressive partner and primus inter pares, Malcolm Martineau, took us immediately into Erlkönig territory. Here we have a rider in the night before his wedding nuptials being tempted by elves dancing on the shore together with all the seductive qualities which Erlkönig’s daughter can muster, the repeated “komm tanze mit mir” (= dance with me) an open invitation to Oluf to render up his soul. When he resists, his fate is sealed. Boesch’s fortissimo delivery of the line “Sie tät ihm geben einen Schlag auf’s Herz“ (= She struck her hand across his heart) was spine-chilling in its intensity. An example of Loewe’s mastery of scene-painting comes when Oluf relates to his mother the details of his journey, where the reference to the Erlking’s realm is followed by three emphatic chords in the accompaniment. Boesch then softened the mood almost imperceptibly as the wedding celebrations proceed before the heart-stopping moment when the bride discovers the body of her betrothed lying beneath a scarlet cloak.
Loewe’s ability to conjure up the essence of a scene comes in his Der Pilgrim vor St Just, in which the incessant triplet repetitions in the accompaniment mimic the tolling of bells and a maestoso chorale feature for the left hand takes the listener into the deep recesses of the Spanish monastery at Yuste. Boesch’s authoritative delivery was also humbling in the way it called to mind the democratising reality of death, expressed notably by Hamlet in his reference to a king progressing through the guts of a beggar. Here it is the Emperor Charles V, who is soon to “fall to dust like the old Empire”.
The third song, Odins Meeresritt, sees a blacksmith being transported through the skies on a magical horse. The raging of the storm in the night and the internal struggle of a simple craftsman in his forge to comprehend what is going on were vividly brought to life by Boesch, the sharp cutting edge of his clarion-clear upper register set against his stentorian lower reaches, aided by pointing fingers, hands clasped together and fists held high.
When a singer totally owns the text, you hear it again and again in so many minor details. As in the fourth song, Tom der Reimer, where Thomas Rhymer, the character in an old Scottish ballad, encounters an other-worldly Queen of Heaven sitting on a white steed. Boesch savoured every single syllable in the line “Du bist von dieser Erde nicht” (= You are not of this earth).
This group of Loewe songs concluded with an archetypical Gothic horror story, his Edward, written in his early twenties and brimming with the relish of dark and deathly deeds. It is cast in the form of a dialogue between the protagonist and his mother, each new twist encapsulated in the recurring cry of “Oh!”, until right at the very end we learn that the patricide was done at the instigation of the mother. Boesch’s presence was mesmerising throughout, the cavernous sounds of his bass register full of import and foreboding: when interrogated by his mother about what will become of Edward’s house and home, his answer is to let them stand till down they fall. The walls of the Wigmore Hall could hardly contain the heart-rending cry at the close when Edward confronts his mother with “Der Fluch der Hölle soll auf Euch ruhn” (= The curse of hell shall be upon you).
After the interval, the final group of three Loewe songs showed the composer in much more lyrical vein. Süsses Begräbnis, which details the burial of a shepherdess, to a poem by Friedrich Rückert, is full of consolatory sounds, both for voice and accompaniment, the soothing balm applied in dynamic levels scarcely above mezzo piano, the care in Boesch’s voice clearly manifest. The concluding two songs are amongst the fifty-one settings of poems by Goethe, including one of the poet’s shortest but most famous pieces, Über allen Gipfeln ist Ruh. This, and the preceding Der du von dem Himmel bist, were marked by absolute steadiness of delivery and a deeply affecting inwardness.
In many respects, it was Loewe’s misfortune to be overshadowed by Schubert. If the older composer doesn’t quite have all the depth and desolation revealed by the master of the German Kunstlied, Loewe’s ability to marry epic and lyrical elements as well as his keen sense of drama make for rewarding listening. For some, his setting of Erlkönig is regarded as superior to the one by Schubert.
The title Des Knaben Wunderhorn comes from a collection of folk poems assembled by Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano in the first decade of the 19th century. It is not surprising that this quintessential Romantic anthology should appeal to the quintessential Romantic that Mahler was. Its reach and range are extensive: Heinrich Heine called the collection “the heartbeat of the German people”. Mahler was especially haunted by the tales of hussars, drummer boys and sentries, some rooted in the Thirty Years’ War which had devastated German lands in the 17th century, including Mahler’s Bohemian homeland. An appreciation of the hellhole of life itself and the never-yielding presentiment of death infuse the last of the three songs that Boesch offered, Der Tamboursg’sell, in which this particular drummer-boy contemplates the gallows for which he is destined. All of this sadness was richly conveyed by Boesch, his head often bowed, his demeanour one of utter dejection, culminating in the spine-tingling farewell of “Gute Nacht”, its first iteration etched in raw pain and its second drained of all life-energy. The preceding song, Der Schildwache Nachtlied,saw a splendid contrast between the “king”, the “emperor” who “wages war”, sung with maximum amplitude, and the sotto voce elements stretching into the falsetto register for the references to the forlorn sentinel at midnight.
Boesch moved without a pause from the final Loewe song to Mahler’s song-cycle, Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, which represents the cry of a wounded heart. The choice of title is significant, for the Geselle or journeyman was a man in transition from apprentice to master, harking back to the medieval artisan who would travel from town to town, plying his trade. Mahler’s music is shrink-wrapped to every nuance in the narrative. In this recital it had quicksilver changes of mood in the first song; the initial elation and exultation on display in the second then markedly slowing for mezzo voce references in the final stanza to the diminishing prospect of happiness; the third saw Boesch in theatrical mode, his eyes lifted right up for “Wenn ich in den Himmel seh”, the voice full of anguish and pain, the repeated “O weh!” the very model of desolation; the fourth had a touching sense of resignation, matched by the heavy tread in the accompaniment, Boesch imbuing the nouns in the final line, “Mein Gesell war Lieb und Leide” (= My companions were love and grief) with weight and emphasis, and neatly summing up the Romanic predicament. Where happiness is present, sadness cannot be far behind.
Alexander Hall
Loewe and Mahler
Loewe: Herr Oluf; Der Pilgrim vor St Just; Odins Meeresritt; Tom der Reimer; Edward
Mahler (from Des Knaben Wunderhorn): Des Antonius von Padua Fischpredigt; Der Schildwache Nachtlied; Der Tamboursg’sell
Loewe: Süsses Begräbnis; Der du von dem Himmel bist (Wandrers Nachtlied); Über allen Gipfeln ist Ruh (Wandrers Nachtlied)
Mahler: Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen
Florian Boesch (baritone); Malcolm Martineau (piano)
Wigmore Hall, London, 28 June 2026
All photos © Machreich Artists Management