Hyperion Records

Reichardt set this poem twice. This version, the first, appeared as No 18 of Lyrische Gedichte (1794). The marking is Feurig und stark deklamiert, the music exceptional for the inexorable rise of one and a half octaves—step by step from D above middle C to top A—in the opening thirteen bars of the vocal line; this is supported by an accompaniment of ceaselessly oscillating semiquavers. The music generates a kind of wild energy that is not dissimilar to Schubert’s song of twenty-one years later, and it is even more demanding for the singer. Reichardt’s second version, a rather less stormy piece in C minor, was printed in 1808 as a supplement to the Viennese periodical Prometheus.

comparative Schubert listening:
Rastlose Liebe D138. 19 May 1815

from notes by Graham Johnson © 2006