Von Sagen und Helden

The mediation of text achieves the immediate effect that an opera aria or, in particular, a song can evoke. The chamber-musical concentration that a piano song, for example, can evoke, i.e. The arrangement of a song by a singer and a pianist, can hardly be surpassed - this in a concert genre that only became established late, in the second half of the 19th century, and has nowadays often receded into the background. It is no longer just about entertainment, or even just diversion: song composition demands truthfulness, inwardness and the ability to transmit these prerequisites as a performer and to receive them as an audience. In the 150 years since 1750, a song culture has developed in European, and especially German-language, vocal music that is unique in it's music-historical significance and that has reached unsurpassed heights in the song oeuvre of Franz Schubert (1797-1828) and Robert Schumann (1810-1856). The present CD brings together piano songs to which one can attach rhapsodic, folkloristic or historicising subjects. They tell of "legends and heroes" and lead the listener into a sonorous dream world.