Hyperion Records

Lachner’s songs are the clearest audible evidence of his closeness to Schubert, and his absorption of the Schubert style. Most of his songs were written in Vienna two or three years after Schubert’s death. Lachner is audacious enough to set texts from Schubert’s Schwanengesang (perhaps in conscious homage) but Ständchen and Das Fischermädchen are beautiful songs in their own right, as is the Rellstab setting Herbst with the additional colour, ideal for an autumnal evocation, of an obbligato cello. Perhaps the most Schubertian song of all, Nachtigall with its sweet melancholy in the major key, has a text which Schubert never set, by Bauernfeld, a member of the Schubert circle whose poetry (apart from Shakespeare translations and the libretto for the opera Der Graf von Gleichen) was set only once by the composer (Der Vater mit dem Kind, D906).

from notes by Graham Johnson © 2006