Ian Bostridge/Saskia Giorgini
(Pentatone)
The tenor brings wonderful care and clarity to this collection that includes all of Schumann’s greatest song-cycles

Robert Schumann’s “year of song”, 1840, is one of the miracles of 19th-century music, Finally able to marry Clara Wieck, he celebrated in an outpouring of lieder – more than 100 settings, which are grouped into 15 opus numbers and include all his greatest song-cycles. With the exception of two numbers, settings of poems by Rückert and Schiller from the 1849 Lieder-Album für die Jugend, Op 79 which close their selection, tenor Ian Bostridge and pianist Saskia Giorgini’s disc is devoted to songs that Schumann composed during that first extraordinary burst of lyrical creativity. They include one of the well-known song cycles, the Op 39 Liederkreis, to poems by Eichendorff, together with the 12 Kerner Lieder Op 35 (after the poet Justinus Kerner), and the much less familiar group of five songs on texts by Adelbert Chamisso that make up Schumann’s Op 40.

Bostridge’s performances of all these songs have a wonderful clarity and sensitivity. He so obviously cares deeply about the texts and ensures that he delivers them with such vividness and clarity that there is not a syllable out of place. His tone has darkened over the years, and he uses those deeper shades to great effect in the more introspective numbers in the Liederkreis, just as effectively as he brightens his sound for the relatively lightweight lyrics of the Chamisso set. Occasionally his habit of inserting tiny crescendos into each note of a sustained line becomes a little obtrusive, but this is really an album full of treasures, and also the occasional discovery.