Lieder And Duette

Johannes Brahms wrote well over 300 lieder, including his arrangements of German folk songs, partsongs and choral lieder. Considering how long he carried a song around in his head before writing and publishing the final version, this is an astonishing amount. This 2-album set presents a selection from Brahms' huge lied repertoire, which not only gives an impression of his importance to music history up to the present day and what a perfect lied composer he was, but also reveals what a cheerful, young-at-heart and humorous person he must have been. The selection of songs and duets is arranged chronologically 1853-1896 and includes all phases of his life in which the lied played a central role, thus allowing the development of the German-language song in the time after Beethoven, Schubert and Schumann to be clearly traced. The pianist Jan Schultsz plays on a wonderful original J.B. Streicher fortepiano from 1871, a model on which Brahms also preferred to play. The singers are Rachel Harnisch, Marina Viotti and Yannick Debus young singers who have already celebrated successes in concert and in major opera houses.