Angelika Kirchschlager
mezzo-soprano
Graham Johnson piano

Graham Johnson’s complete Schubert and Schumann songs series for Hyperion are landmarks in the history of recorded music. Now this indefatigable performer and scholar turns to the songs and vocal works of Brahms. Each disc of this Hyperion edition takes a journey through Brahms’s career. The songs are not quite presented in chronological order but they do appear here in the order that the songs were presented to the world. Each recital represents a different journey through the repertoire (and thus through Brahms’s life). In a number of these Hyperion recitals an opus number will be
presented in its entirety (in the case of this disc, Op 48). The folksongs of 1894 will be shared between all the singers in the series.

Hyperion is delighted to present the celebrated mezzo-soprano Angelika Kirchschlager in this first volume of the series.

She enjoys an international career as one of today’s most important singers, dividing her time between recitals and opera in Europe, North America and the Far East.

‘As Ms. Kirchschlager shaped the spacious, arching phrases of the first Brahms song, “Meine Liebe Ist Grün” ... she conveyed the poet’s evocation of a lush, sun-drenched lilac bush, a symbol of his love. Yet the ardor evoked here is intoxicated by the natural fragrance. Ms. Kirchschlager captured this love-drunk state hauntingly through the shimmering and slightly disoriented".

Total Duration: 71'28