Tim Ashley
The Guardian
February 2014

Florian Boesch and Roger Vignoles' new album examines ideas of wandering and travel as metaphors for existential isolation in Schubert's songs. The task they've set themselves isn't particularly easy. The focus on a single imagistic strand brings with it the potential for an awkward sameness of mood, a danger avoided by the immense subtlety both performers bring to their material. The programme opens, as one might expect, with the restless Romanticism of Der Wanderer and closes with the world-weary resignation of the comparatively unfamiliar Die Mutter Erde. In between comes an extended exercise in melancholy, broken by flashes of wit (Der Wanderer an den Mond), exaltation (Im Walde) and defiance (Der Schiffer). Boesch's singing is faultless: he's in fine voice and marvellously alert to every verbal nuance, without ever fracturing the line for the sake of the text. Vignoles, playing some of Schubert's most taxing accompaniments, tirelessly matches his every emotional shift. Very fine.

The Guardian