Brahms: Es steht ein Lind (No. 41 from Deutsche Volkslieder, WoO 33)

Following the iconic series of the complete songs of Schubert and Schumann, Graham Johnson further demonstrates the phenomenal depth of his knowledge in the expert programming of this recital. Each disc in the series represents a different journey through the repertoire, and thus through Brahms’s life. This new volume is sensitively balanced, the opening and closing folksong transcriptions possessing beguiling charm and the five songs of Op 49 being performed in their entirety.

Hyperion is thrilled to welcome the young German tenor Simon Bode to the label. At home in the opera house and the recital hall, Bode possesses a controlled voice of great beauty, and gives performances of immediacy and conviction. Johnson, as accompanist, is immaculate and his usual scholarly notes are of course included.

'By replacing the piano with the guitar, Christoph Prégardien and Tilman Hoppstock have changed the mood of the songs. The tension between voice and instrument changes, forms a different colour-mixture. (Peter Härtling)

'Never has the guitar sounded so absolutely right for these songs.' (Classical Guitar)

Soprano Lucia Popp (1939-1993) was one of the most acclaimed singers of her generation. In this four-CD set she is heard in arias from operas by Weber, Mozart, Lortzing, Puccini, Verdi, Massenet and Monteverdi, songs by Brahms, Mahler, Prokofiev, Dvorak, Kodaly, Janacek, and sacred music by Telemann and Bach.

After making her debut at the Vienna State Opera in the modest role of Barbarina in The Marriage of Figaro, Lucia Popp worked with all the great conductors of her day including Leonard Bernstein, Sir George Solti, Rafael Kubelik, Lorin Maazel, Sir Neville Marriner, Bernard Haitink and Carlos Kleiber. The State Operas of Vienna and Munich honoured Lucia Popp with the title of Kammersängerin and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra awarded her the “Silver Rose”. In 2007 she was placed 7th on BBC Music Magazine's list ‘20 All-time Best Sopranos’ based on a poll of 21 British critics and BBC presenters.

The German baritone Hermann Prey was born in Berlin in 1929. In a career that spanned some 48 years, he became one of the most popular singers of his time and formed a great bond with his audiences through his unaffected and natural style of singing and his personal charm and acting ability. His repertoire was extremely wide and encompassed all the classic German Lieder, as well as a whole range of operatic roles from the lively Figaro of both Mozart and Rossini to more serious baritone parts in Verdi and Wagner, although it is in the lighter roles that he is most affectionately remembered. He enjoyed great success in the world’s major opera houses including Vienna, Bayreuth, Salzburg, Munich, Milan and New York, and also appeared frequently on German TV and in opera films. He died in 1998.

CD 1 begins with two groups of Lieder by Schubert to words by Schiller and Goethe, followed by a selection of 12 Deutsche Volkslieder by Brahms, while CD 2 contains a complete performance of Schubert’s great song cycle Winterreise. CD 3 is devoted to Schumann, including Dichterliebe and songs with words by Kerner, and CD 4 opens with Schumann’s Liederkreis before going on to a collection of songs by Weber.

CD 5 presents six songs by Beethoven, starting with the popular ‘Adelaide’, and these are followed by a group of songs by Liszt, concluding with his setting of Three Sonnets by Petrarch. CD 6 begins with a group of songs by various composers all to words by Goethe that were recorded in 1974 but issued for the first time in 1998 as a tribute to Prey at the time of his death. These are followed by a very attractive selection of German Folk and Wayfarer songs that show Prey in lighter mood.

In CD7 we have a group of ten descriptive ballads by Loewe including his setting of Goethe’s ‘Erlkönig’ and the traditional Scottish poem ‘Tom der Reimer’ (Tom the

Rhymer). This CD ends with a magnificent performance of Bach’s Cantata Ich habe genug with the Orchestra of the Leipzig Gewandhaus conducted by Kurt Thomas that illustrates Prey ‘s talent for German liturgical music and oratorio.

With CD 8 we move to opera in a wide range of repertoire from Baroque and Classical works by Keiser, Gluck and Mozart to the Romantic music of Wagner and Humperdinck. All the arias from French and Italian operas are sung in German, as was the practice in German opera houses at the time these recordings were made.

CD 9 brings us to some more modern operatic items by Leoncavallo Richard Strauss and Korngold and then two powerful arias by Tchaikovsky, after which the mood lifts with extracts from the operettas Gasparone by Millöcker and Boccaccio by Suppé. Finally we have four romantic songs from American musicals that Prey sings in fine idiomatic style. On this CD we also hear Prey’s frequent partner in both opera and operetta, the much loved soprano Anneliese Rothenberger, in several duets.

The final CD begins with arias from a number of German so-called ‘Spielopern’ by Kreutzer, Nessler and Lortzing before concluding in high spirits with items from operettas by those two masters of the genre, Johann Strauss II and Carl Millöcker.