In April, tenor Ian Bostridge released his latest book, a brief meditation on the intricacies of vocal interpretation in music by Monteverdi, Ravel, and Britten titled Song and Self: A Singer’s Reflections on on Music and Performance. In May, he gave a recital at the Boulez Saal in Berlin, with pianist Julius Drake, of works by Robert and Clara Schumann, Schubert, Mahler, and Hans Werner Henze. Bostridge, who wrote his dissertation on witchcraft before beginning his singing career, combines his erudite explorations of the repertoire with an unstudied, spontaneous approach in performance—a combination that often leads to staggering results. I met him the afternoon before his Berlin recital in the lobby of his hotel. We talked about whether lied concerts should have trigger warnings, programming diversity, the elusive definition of quality, and what he learned from crooner Tony Bennett.
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