The Musicbanda Franui, in their capacity as a “transformer station between classical music, folk music, jazz and contemporary chamber music”, have always been interested in the German-language art song, in terms of both where it comes from (folk music), and where it belongs (in music history): from Schubert, Schumann and Mahler to the 21st century. In 2023 Franui, in league with Florian Boesch, their perfect partner in crime, realised their first complete lied cycle: the Schöne Müllerin, and performed it live on stage at the Berlin State Opera.

Other than the Winterreise or Schumann’s “Liederkreise”, Schubert’s first major collection of lieder tells a story: a young journeyman falls in love with the miller’s beautiful daughter, but in the end has to accept that she prefers the handsome hunter. In this version, though, different from traditional interpretations, the journeyman does not take his own life. Indeed, Schubert the master of weltschmerz is no less a cliché than Schubert the king of the landler, to whom posterity attributed a healthy relationship with his native land, with nature, and with love. Boesch and the Franuis deftly avoid such preconceived ideas. In the Berlin performance, one critic noticed “astonishing rhythms” and references to Weill, klezmer and modernism, while another review described it as a “chamber play in the spirit-world”. This recording is an opportunity to experience the dialogue with, and in, the spirit of Schubert as audio theatre.