BEAUTIFULLY COLOURED

'Beautifully coloured, most intelligently but
undemonstratively phrased and nuanced ...'

Schumann songs -
with PETER DALE

Volume Four of Hyperion's Songs of Robert Schumann contains, as its most substantial offering, the Opus 37 Rückert settings Liebesfrühling - that is to say, Schumann in one of his most characteristic moods: Spring, everything remembered as familiar but celebrated as if for the first time, and, above all, love. Elsewhere are the Lieder und Gesänge Op. 51 and Romanzen und Balladen Op. 45, but no less enjoyable are the remaining eleven songs which don't belong to any of the sets, great or small. These bear, for the most part, late opus numbers, though, as every Schumann scholar knows, that is not a dependable guide to chronology, nor necessarily an index of mature quality: Schumann's first essays in every genre - orchestral, instrumental, lieder - so often being among his very best work, such is his disposition to the benevolent infectiousness of Spring and new beginnings. Some of these latter songs are rarely heard in recitals, and still less on disc. Individually, some are indeed quite slight but, in the particular context of this recorded recital, they, and the whole disc, are a delight nonetheless.

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