One of Loewe’s finest Lieder is his rapt, bel canto setting—somewhere between Schubert and Bellini—of the last of Goethe’s great lyrics,
Lynceus, der Thürmer (1833). In the Part Two of
Faust, the lynx-eyed watchman on the tower, and by extension the aged Goethe himself, contemplates the beauty of all he surveys, and hymns his gratitude for the gift of sight.
from notes by Richard Wigmore © 2011
