Volume 26 of our Schubert Edition presents a sequence of music which might have been heard at an 1826 Schubertiad and includes songs, ensemble pieces and Schubert’s only melodrama. The four settings D877 from Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister are given complete; the first is a duet sung by Christine Schäfer and John Mark Ainsley, the other three Mignon songs by Christine Schäfer alone. John Mark Ainsley sings ‘An Silvia’; Christine Schäfer ‘Hark, hark, the lark’. Other highlights include ‘Nachthelle’ sung by John Mark Ainsley with the Chorale, and Christine Schäfer’s radiant singing of Schubert’s loveliest lullaby, Wiegenlied. The moving ‘Abschied von der Erde’ (Farewell to the World), spoken by Richard Jackson, closes the programme.

All of the music on this album is also available as part of the specially priced box set The Complete Songs of Franz Schubert: ‘This is an archive of glorious Lieder singing as much as it is a definitive treasury of the greatest Lieder ever composed’ (The Guardian).