Florian Boesch & Malcolm Martineau Queen’s Hall

On a bright, breezy, bustling festivals morning, it was quite a feat of mental readjustment to relocate to Schubert and Müller’s solitary wanderer lost amid a frozen, hostile landscape. But Florian Boesch took the audience straight there from the first song of Winterreise, summoning regret, fear, fury, even bitter sarcasm as our unknown protagonist is rejected by the woman he loves, and serving as a prelude to deeper explorations of those emotions in the songs that would follow.

It’s almost redundant to mention Boesch’s uncanny vocal control, or his unerring command of tone and articulation, or the aching beauty of his mahogany voice, often hushed or veiled to remarkably expressive effect. Indeed, surrounded by festival music and theatre of every description, it was tempting to view his deeply dramatic Winterreise as a particularly compelling one-man show, one that mercilessly investigates existential grief and hopelessness.

“One-man”, of course, is doing a horrendous disservice: pianist Malcolm Martineau was as compelling a presence, and very much an equal partner in Boesch’s futile wanderings, at times violent and percussive, at others nearly reaching silence and stasis.

It was an extraordinarily intense, vividly characterised account, one it almost felt inappropriate to applaud, let alone contemplating a return outside to the festivals madness. Far better to simply hide away in a darkened room.