Max Reger
12 Lieder op. 51
17 Gesänge op. 70
Markus Schäfer, tenor
Ernst Breidenbach, piano
catalog number 21142
Max Reger wrote more than three hundred Lieder with piano accompaniment, a comprehensive body of work that clearly exceeds the amount written by Richard Strauss, Johannes Brahms, Arnold Schönberg or Hans Pfizner. This makes it clear that Reger considered the genre to be very important and he composed the Lieder during a relatively short period between the years 1893 and 1907 (with comparatively few exceptions which followed in the years till 1915).
This recording presents the complete Lied cycles op. 51 and op. 70.
"Right from the start we did not want to just string together individual songs, but to perform the songs in their original, correct context, as published by the master himself. Since most of these songs are virtually unknown, working on them is also always an adventure; you never know where the journey will take you.
We feel we have been richly rewarded and have tried, as accurately as possible, to trace the peculiarities and expressivity of these song compositions, which, for all their complexity and diversity, still seem to follow an absolutely stringent inner logic.“
Markus Schäfer & Ernst Breidenbach