Every now and then, Graham Johnson and some of his friends will drop by for a lieder recital. Sometimes he'll bring Christine Schäfer and Schumann. Other times he'll bring Felicity Lott and Chausson. And, for a long time, he brought just about every singer in Great Britain and Schubert. Johnson and his friends may stay for a few songs or they may stay all night, but they're always entertaining, often affectionate, and sometimes moving. In this three-disc set, Johnson and five fine singers have stopped by to perform 78 songs ...
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Every now and then, Graham Johnson and some of his friends will drop by for a lieder recital. Sometimes he'll bring Christine Schäfer and Schumann. Other times he'll bring Felicity Lott and Chausson. And, for a long time, he brought just about every singer in Great Britain and Schubert. Johnson and his friends may stay for a few songs or they may stay all night, but they're always entertaining, often affectionate, and sometimes moving. In this three-disc set, Johnson and five fine singers have stopped by to perform 78 songs by Schubert's friends and contemporaries. Some of Schubert' friends and contemporaries, everybody's heard of -- Haydn, Beethoven, and Mendelssohn -- some of them only specialists have heard of -- Hüttenbrenner, Püttlingen, and Randhartinger -- and some of them have become the punch line of a joke only accompanists get -- Reichardt, Zumsteeg, and Zelter. In many cases, these composers knowingly or unknowingly set the same texts as Schubert. There are, for example, four Erlkönigs,...
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