Ian Bostridge continues his new exploration of Schubert song cycles with a recording of Die schöne Müllerin, together with pianist Saskia Giorgini. Die schöne Müllerin (1823) was Schubert’s first song cycle, and simultaneously Bostridge’s first extended introduction to the Lied and all its wonders. Schubert initially conceived the cycle together with poet Wilhelm Müller as a party game among friends, but gradually got captivated by the profundity of this apparently naïve love story. Bostridge is equally fascinated by the way in which this playful, folk-inspired piece gradually transforms into a cosmic lullaby in the final lines of the last song ‘des Baches Wiegenlied’. For pianist Giorgini, the key to - but also the greatest challenge of - interpreting Schubert’s music, and particularly Die schöne Müllerin, lies in the oceanic experience and hypnotic power of repetition.

In his five Stanze, composed in 2016, Mauro Montalbetti openly declares his special affinity with the author of Boléro, placing him within the select circle of his greatest loves. What strikes one most is the refined and yet frank way in which this devotion is expressed in the music and is revealed in the writing, in the way it unfolds majestically, so to speak, across the staves and the pages. In other words one is struck not only audibly but also visually by the limpidity with which the five pieces pay homage to their source, namely Maurice Ravel’s Miroirs. Miroirs, that is mirrors. A title that at the time – we are in 1905 – encapsulated the genius with which the composer played with the ambiguities of symbolist and im-pressionist poetics, of the eternal torments concerning the expressive and semantic qualities of music. Because the mirror reflects, represents, but also deceives, creates illusions.