Schumann - Myrthen

The Guardian 80

(Sony Classical)
The second in a Schumann survey, Christian Gerhaher, Gerold Huber and Camilla Tilling deliver bright and varied recordings of songs the composer wrote for his wife

Christian Gerhaher and his regular recital partner Gerold Huber began their survey of Schumann’s songs a year ago. Their first release carefully avoided any of the well-known cycles, offering a selection of pieces that ranged across Schumann’s song-writing career, with the relatively unfamiliar Kerner Lieder, Op 35 as the centrepiece. With this second instalment, for which they are joined by the soprano Camilla Tilling, they move into more widely known territory with the 26 songs that were published in four albums under the title Myrthen (Myrtles). All were composed in 1840, the year in which, as Gerhaher writes in his penetrating liner essay, Schumann produced “a torrent of songs that until then had evidently been held back as if by a dam”. The composer presented a specially bound edition of the Myrthen songs to Clara on the eve of their wedding that year.