Verlorne Müh is a unequal contest. Here the music is outright caricature, the girl’s wheedling Ländler-rhythms and lachrymose grace notes becoming ever more extreme, and the boy’s brushoff increasingly peremptory. But remove just a little of the acid, and the song could have come straight from the pen of Johann Strauss.
from notes by Roger Vignoles © 2008
