In
Der Wirthin Töchterlein (1823) Loewe sets an ironically sentimental Uhland tale of three Rhenish lads vying in their devotion to an innkeeper’s dead daughter. After the jaunty opening, he dramatizes the tragic revelation (‘Mein Töchterlein liegt auf der Todtenbahr’) with a shock fortissimo on an alien chord. The third lad’s avowal of eternal love is crowned by a lingering descent on ‘Ewigkeit’, and a seraphic postlude that seems to pre-echo Schubert’s
Ave Maria.
from notes by Richard Wigmore © 2011
