Click to sample and buy the albumThis album of Liszt songs sung by soprano Diana Damrau accompanied by pianist Helmut Deutsch comes to us at the end of the Liszt anniversary year. It’s one of those rare albums that present relatively unfamiliar music by a very well known composer in performances that may not ever be surpassed.
Liszt wrote approximately 80 songs, mostly setting German texts (Schiller, Heine, Goethe, Lenau are the noteworthy poets here) but also Italian (Petrarch), Hungarian, Russian and even English. It’s difficult to say why his songs aren’t more popular. Certainly his other works overshadowed them, but as Andrew Huth points out in his excellent liner notes, the songs are also quite difficult.
