Hyperion Records

Berger’s songs are mostly simple and are clearly meant for amateur performance. Nevertheless, they have a terse kind of effectiveness and greater sophistication than a preliminary reading first reveals. There are two songs here where the Schubert enthusiast will not be familiar with the texts—Am Maienfeste which gives words to a character, the hunter, who stays ominously silent in Schubert’s cycle, and Rose, die Müllerin for the Maid of the Mill who only speaks in reported speech in the Müller version.

from notes by Graham Johnson © 2006