Obra: Der arme Peter, Op.53 no.3

A traditional Lieder programme at the Edinburgh International Festival brings songs concerned with love, celebrating its joys but more often lamenting its loss and its pains. 

In an engrossing all-Heine song and poetry recital, baritone Florian Boesch and actor Thomas Quasthoff probed the amorous Sorrows of Young Heinrich. 

If this first song recital of the season is any indication of the level we can expect at the Konzerthaus, lovers of Lieder are in for a real treat. Christian Gerhaher and Gerold Huber set the bar very high last night in a hefty program including Schumann’s Dichterliebe and a dozen other songs, a set of Fauré, and the world première of a song cycle by Jörg Widmann.