Brahms: Wenn du nur Zuweilen lächelst (No. 2 from Acht Lieder und Gesänge, Op. 57)

Following the iconic series of the complete songs of Schubert and Schumann, Graham Johnson’s latest enterprise traverses the complete songs of Brahms. He is joined here on Volume 2 by the wonderful Christine Schäfer, whose contribution to the Schumann song series won a prestigious Gramophone Award.

Each volume in the series takes us on a journey through Brahms’s career, from youthful settings to songs of maturity. Volume 2 includes a selection of delightful Mädchenlieder and concludes with a handful of Brahms’s intimate folksong settings.

Discerningly partnered by Graham Johnson, Christine Schäfer is in perfect voice. She sings with a pure, luminous tone, crystal clear diction and eloquent phrasing, making this a superb recital in its own right. As part of the wider survey of the complete songs of Brahms, it will take an essential place in any Lieder-lover’s collection.

For many years, Barbara Hendricks has been communicating her love of the lied in concerts and on disc. After Schumann, Schubert, Beethoven, Spanish songs and those of Poulenc, it is the turn of Brahms to find sublimation in this disc from the Swedish soprano, magnificently accompanied on the piano by her partner Roland Pöntinen and recorded between 2002-7.

Brahms composed more than 200 lieder throughout his career, though for the most part between 1851 and 1888. In the choice of texts he was generally guided by the climate or message of a poem, more than by its formal perfection; it was no doubt for this reason that he set very little Goethe to music, whose poems, he said, “are all so accomplished that music cannot be added to them”. His favourite theme was, naturally enough, love, in all its forms, whether evoking joy, optimism or nostalgia, loss, resignation, memory… One finds in these lieder authentic, personal experiences of Johannes Brahms. Caught between romanticism and classicism, he offered in his lieder music that is individual and consummate.

For her first Lieder recital, respectes soprano Anja Harteros has made a personal choice, spanning a wide arc from Haydn to Strauss. “Anja Harteros is a tall, dark beauty whose smoldering emotions erupt into cascades of gorgeously produced tone, all right on the mark and thrilling to hear.” New York Magazine.

Hans Hotter was one of the major artists signed to EMI by the legendary record producer Walter Legge in Vienna as soon as the Second World War ended and one of his first recordings for the company was the Brahms Requiem under Herbert von Karajan, an extract from which is included in this set. This 6-CD set is devoted mainly to German Lieder and includes an impressive collection of songs recorded when Hotter was in his prime and generally accompanied by Gerald Moore. A number of tracks in this set are appearing in stereo for the first time on CD; their only previous stereo issue was on a local Angel LP in the USA.The two excerpts from Die Meistersinger are incomplete because the recordings were not released at the time they were made (1948) and some of the original 78 rpm masters had not survived by the time the items were issued on LP for the first time in 1982.