Your Friend, Death
News |
At a song recital, the singer is not only a performer but also his own director and dramaturg, who, through the selection of pieces alone, is able to create stimulating, highly theatrical evenings. Günther Groissböck’s song recital on September 22 should also be understood in this sense. The Austrian bass—who recently appeared at the Vienna State Opera as King Philip in Verdi’s Don Carlo —will, together with pianist Malcolm Martineau, span a wide arc ranging from Franz Schubert through Hugo Wolf and Hans Pfitzner to Mussorgsky’s dramatic, yet ultimately comforting songs and dances of death.
This evening will explore the idea of a life of wandering and pilgrimage as well as the secret call for freedom within Metternich’ssystem of Biedermeier and the ambivalence of death, which oscillates between merciless monumentality— which even the strongest cannot escape, and the lullaby singer who bestows eternal peace. By the end of the concert, the audience will in any case have embarked on a multifaceted journey and, as always, having been transformed by their encounter with high art—in the spirit of Rilke’s Archaic Torso of Apollo —they will set out on their journey home a changed people.