FRANZ SCHUBERT Schwanengesang. Goethe-Lieder Werner Güra, Christoph Berner

Schubert was unbelievably productive in the last few months of his life. As well as major masterpieces of the chamber and piano repertoires, 1828 also saw the composition of his lieder to texts by Ludwig Rellstab and Heinrich Heine. Posthumously published together the next year under the title ‘Swansong’, these songs are in fact exceptionally wide-ranging in atmosphere and content: the tender murmur of a brook is followed by a warrior’s premonitions of death; serenades and nostalgia rub shoulders with the anguish of Der Doppelgänger. Schubertian grace dances on the very brink of the abyss.