Ich halte ihr die Augen zu is taken from Neue Gedichte, a collection whose enigmatic love sentiments Stanford clearly found enchanting. The precedent of Schumann – the highly calculated chromatic nuances, the delicate piano filigree, and the poignant use of appoggiaturas – is clearly in evidence, but there is also an extraordinary adroitness in the development of the song’s simple lyricism, a fact apparent in the reiteration of the opening phrase (‘Ich halte ihr die Augen zu’) which recurs each time on a different tonal plane, charged, as was Stanford’s intention, with different meaning.

from notes by Jeremy Dibble © 2000