Franui & Florian Boesch
Alles wieder gut

“Alles wieder gut” is the ultimate Liederabend with Florian Boesch – one of the most sought-after Lieder-interpreters of our time – and Musicbanda Franui, the iconic ten-piece, three-decade old band from the wilderness of East Tyrol. Famous and lesser known romantic songs from Schubert, Schumann, Mahler et al. are taken apart and re-assembled. The melodies remain the same, but the garb in which they re-appear is brand new: Harp, dulcimer, zither, double bass, accordion and a whole flock of brass and wind instruments swoop down on these songs. And, go figure, the hundred plus years old songs about love and loss touch us profoundly and have truths to tell us.

The classical art song is in a difficult position. It leads a museum-like existence. It does appear regularly in concert halls, when a new singer wants to offer his or her interpretation of “A Winter Journey” or “Songs of a Wayfarer” to the world, but it suffers from a lack of fresh air. [... But] Franui have, for example, made Schubert their own in such a way that I start up with surprise when I hear one of these deeply intimate melodies, interpreted by Franui with all the persuasive power of intelligibility, played in its original form. [...]

Over the course of the 27 years that we, the members of Franui, have been making music, we’ve managed to hop from one cow pie to the next. It all began with playing dirges and funeral marches in the small East Tyrolean village of Innervillgraten, which is home to more or less all of us. [...]

Franui is the name of a mountain pasture close to the small village of Innervillgraten, located at 1,402 metres above sea level in East Tyrol in Austria, where most of the Franui musicians grew up. The word is of Rhaeto-Romanic origin and refers to the proximity of Innervillgraten to the Ladin-speaking region in the Dolomite Alps.

The Musicbanda of the same name have been playing together in nearly the same lineup since 1993 and are frequently invited to perform at major festivals and venues, e. g. Konzerthaus Vienna, Burgtheater Vienna, Salzburg Festival, Bregenz Festival, Tyrolean Festspiele Erl, Ruhrtriennale, Holland Festival, Klara Festival Brussels, State Opera Unter den Linden Berlin, Munich Opera Festival, Philharmonie Cologne, Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Ludwigsburger Schlossfestspiele, Schauspielhaus Zurich, Philharmonie Luxembourg or Philharmonie de Paris, to name a few.

Their adaptations of lieder by Schubert, Schumann, Brahms and Mahler have earned Franui renown beyond the Austrian borders. The ensemble regard themselves as a “transformer station between classical music, folk music, jazz and contemporary chamber music;” sometimes the original is lovingly celebrated in all its beauty, at others it is turned rightside up (or upside down), stripped down to its bare bones, enhanced, painted over, elaborated, in a process that blurs the boundaries between interpretation and improvisation, between arrangement and (re)composition.

For their live shows and music theater productions Franui frequently collaborate with other exceptional performers, including baritone Florian Boesch, writer Hans Magnus Enzensberger, puppeteer Nikolaus Habjan, Viennese song-duo “Die Strottern”, mask theater ensemble “Familie Flöz”, Bavarian Radio Chorus, filmmaker Alexander Kluge, video artist Jonas Dahlberg or actors Dörte Lyssewski, Sven-Eric Bechtolf and Peter Simonischek.

Since 2015 Franui have been in charge of programming the festival “Gemischter Satz” hosted by Konzerthaus Vienna each year in May, which presents new forms of interaction between music, art, literature and wine.

Franui’s albums are released on the label col legno and have won several prizes. In 2018 “Ständchen der Dinge,” the album celebrating the ensemble’s 25th anniversary, won the German Record Critics’ Award.


Florian Boesch