Wolf, H: Der Gärtner (No. 17 from Mörike-Lieder)

The larger-than-life Régine Crespin, made only one song recital record for Decca, of music by Schumann, Wolf, Debussy and Poulenc. This is the first time the entire recital has been made available on CD.

As her career progressed, Crespin became associated with certain roles – Kundry, Sieglinde, Brünnhilde, Tosca, the Marschallin – but she was prodigiously versatile, thanks to her years in the French provinces. An intelligent singer who understood how to make the texts count, Crespin also had tremendous success in non-operatic repertory. Her 1963 Decca recording, with conductor Ernest Ansermet, of Berlioz’s Les Nuits d'été and Ravel’s Shéhérazade, is regarded as among the best available. In its original French, her candid and entertaining autobiography is called La vie et l'amour d'une femme, which is also the French translation of Schumann's song cycle Frauenliebe und -leben. Indeed, Lieder by Schumann and Wolf were important parts of her recital repertory, and she brought the same depth of meaning to their German texts as she did to her Wagnerian roles. Of course French, being her native language, evoked a most immediate and intimate response from this singer.

This release marks the launch of an Eloquence series of notable recitals of songs and opera arias by some of the great voices of Decca and Deutsche Grammophon.

Kathleen Ferrier was one of the greatest British singers of the 20th century. For ten years she enjoyed an unparallelled career, admired equally for the generous warmth and sincerity of her interpretations as for her uniquely splendid contralto voice. This reissue features twelve arias and songs that Ferrier recorded for Decca between 1946 and 1950. In addition there are eight treasurable items from a 1949 Norwegian Radio recital in Oslo, which include her only published recordings of Hugo Wolf.

Mark Obert-Thorn, producer and audio restoration engineer

This is the first disc in a series that will be the first ever complete edition of the songs of Hugo Wolf. These performances were recorded live at the Oxford Lieder Festival (in the Holywell Music Room) on 22nd October 2010.

Irmgard Seefried’s interpretation of the Composer in Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos is said to have inspired Strauss himself to exclaim that until then he had not known how good his Composer was. She was also one of the most sought-after concert singers and lieder recitalists of her age. Not released until now, the many recordings included in the present CD attest to the richness and variety of that palette even during the early years of her career. The earliest of these recordings are Peter Cornelius's Brautlieder from the heyday of the Romantic art song, settings in which the soprano's exemplary treatment of the words and the vocal line are fully in evidence.The affinities between this cycle of six songs and the traditional German folksong offer the singer - a native of Swabia - a welcome opportunity to colour her tone even further, an approach that is also found in her recordings of songs by Mozart, Brahms,Wolf and two lesser-known composers, Wilhelm Kienzl and Joseph Marx.This compilation of Irmgard Seefried's recordings from the first ten years of her career in Vienna additionally includes some of Strauss's most popular songs, songs such as Morgen and Allerseelen that make it clear why, as we noted above, their composer held the soprano in such high regard.

Two of the world’s most seasoned Schubertians, both long associated with Wigmore Hall, come together for the next new release from Wigmore Hall Live.

Live from Wigmore Hall - 19 February 2008

This recording comprises 26 of the 53 lieder that Wolf wrote on the poems of Eduard Mörike, born just seven years after Schubert in 1804, but outliving the composer nearly five decades.

Reviewing the concert in Seen & Heard International stated that: “The partnership between Cooper and Holzmair is so close, it’s almost symbiotic”

“Rarely have I heard so sensitive, intelligent and gloriously musical a partnership. No-one could have asked for more attentive, detailed expressions nor more complete harmony of feeling between singer and pianist … I was transfixed by the sheer artistry.” (The Independent)

Wolfgang Holzmair is a native of Upper Austria, and the British pianist Imogen Cooper, whose training included a period in Vienna studying with Paul Badura-Skoda, Jörg Demus and Alfred Brendel.

Although Lisa Della Casa sang in many operas in Salzburg, she gave only a single lieder recital: in 1957 in the Grosser Saal of the Mozarteum, accompanied by the Hungarian pianist Arpad Sándor, esteemed chamber music partner of musicians such as Fritz Kreisler and Jascha Heifetz.Anyone who had not expected lieder to be a speciality of this lyric soprano would soon be disabused: with the incomparable clarity and simplicity of her melodic line and her precise and unaffected articulation, Lisa Della Casa excelled with touchstones of the repertoire by Schubert and Brahms. She also honoured her compatriot Othmar Schoeck (who had died the previous spring) with her performance of two lieder from his new setting of Goethe's singspiel libretto Erwin und Elmire. She also included in her programme three of the Chansons populaires by Ravel, 1957 being the 20th anniversary of his death. Naturally, she concluded her recital with a group of lieder by Richard Strauss, the composer with whose works her name is still most associated.A unique delight made available to the modern audience thanks to this Orfeo recording.