Schubert: Wiegenlied, D498 (Cradle Song 'Schlafe, holder, süßer Knabe')

Kirchschlager amd Lehrbaumer take us on a “lieder journey” across Austria.

They have included the songs which they feel particularly close to in this collection.

Their survey of Austro-German Song also includes works by Schumann, Liszt and Richard Strauss.

Compelling for her intensity and integrity as much as for her unmistakeable voice, Dame Janet Baker struck a distinctive path as a performer, primarily on the concert and recital stage. Among her most celebrated recordings are her interpretations of Elgar with Sir John Barbirolli, here complemented by songs and oratorio arias by composers such as Bach, Handel, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Mahler, Strauss, Fauré, Vaughan Williams and Britten.

The Lied is at the heart of Schubert’s output. Throughout his short life, and right up to the weeks immediately before his death, he took a keen interest in every aspect of this genre, which constituted the most intimate expression of the German psyche, of which Schubert was from very early on well placed to act as a vehicle for its sentiments and its torments (love, friendship, pain, loneliness), ranging widely across its joys and its sorrows in all their subtle shadings. Schubert composed quickly, occasionally writing as many as nine or ten Lieder in a single day, with a prodigious fluency that won the admiration of Schumann.

A born song-writer, he loved to perform his own Lieder, accompanying himself on the piano; he admitted that he could get carried away by singing for hours on end. In Schubert’s songs, the voice is always the focus of attention, while the piano accompaniment provides a psychological backdrop. Less discriminating in his choice of poems than Schumann or Wolf, Schubert was more interested in verbal colouring and the emotional content of a text than in its literary value, and although his some six hundred Lieder are in a wide range of forms – from simple strophic songs to dramatic scenas – they are still characterised by their exceptional simplicity, freshness and spontaneity of utterance.

One of this country’s finest and most popular singers, Dame Janet Baker has a special place in the hearts of music-lovers throughout the land. Since making her Covent Garden and New York debuts in 1966 she has become synonymous with a wide range of much-loved baroque and romantic repertoire. Janet Baker was made a Dame 25 years ago. Here, for the first time, EMI have gathered together some of her most memorable performances on one double CD.

Pia Heise - a rare talent nurtured by world leading accompanist, Roger Vignoles, has her first CD released featuring a beautiful selection of music which has a theme of the night running through it.

This CD is the result of a charity “lullaby project”. It was initiated by the singer Cornelius Hauptmann, who was concerned that traditional lullabies were dying out. For many children, lullabies are their first intense contact with music and Hauptmann was able to persuade 52 of the best German singers whose first language is German to record one lullaby each, for no fee.

Victoria de los Ángeles’ son Alex has Down's Syndrome and she used to sing many of the songs on this disc to him. The CD is a collaboration between the Victoria de los Ángeles Foundation and the Catalan Down Syndrome Foundation. The project includes the voices and paintings of children with Down Syndrome.