Feuerreiter

360° Hugo Wolf. The title says it all. Daniel Johannsen and Andreas Fröschl present an exquisite selection of art songs from Wolf’s extensive oeuvre. Combined with the sound of the contemporary grand piano by Carl Rönisch (1872), these songs are distilled into a unique, fascinating essence of the art of Lied of the late Romantic period.

The baritone Georg Nigl is fascinated by ballads, which unfold in him "dream images". Schubert's long and little-known lied Viola , based on a poem by Franz von Schober, or the great ballads based on texts by Goethe "opened up a world that has always accompanied me, that of the storyteller (…) stories of frightening beauty, with as many colours as possible…". The magnificent pianos on this recording - a Christoph Kern fortepiano after Conrad Graf (Vienna, 1826) and a Steinway & Sons concert grand piano (New York, 1875) - beautifully played by Olga Pashchenko, with whom Georg now forms an intimate and inspired duo, allow us to hear "unknown sounds and sometimes unheard-of colours"…

The four young singers of Ensemble Quartonal are among the most sought-after vocal ensembles in Germany. This time, their album program features dreamlike and fabulous romantic vocal music from the 19th and early 20th centuries with works by Mendelssohn, Rheinberger, Poulenc, Josef Kromolicki and Mathieu Neumann, among others.

By 1976 Fischer-Dieskau had been performing before the microphone for almost thirty years and was approaching the end of his vocal prime – he turned 51 that year. Yet his mastery of Wolf's intricate, concentrated, turn-on-a-dime idiom was at its height. You can buy any number of individual recitals by him that feature Wolf, and 175 songs on six CDs is a lot to absorb. Nonetheless, this budget repackaging is a must-listen. The singer got a new lease on his artistic life by taking up partnerships with noted pianists like Brendel, Richter, and Barenboim.

“The mystery of the ballad comes from the way it is told” - Goethe. This fascinating repertory requires the performer to play each of the characters as he or she would in an opera. Who better than Stéphane Degout to take up the challenge of plunging into the heart of German Romanticism? Fresh from winning a Victoire de la Musique in 2019, the French baritone truly embodies each of the protagonists in these shattering miniature dramas. Beside him here are a longstanding partner and two exceptional guests.