This volume of our Schubert edition has the subtitle ‘The Young Schubert’ and it contains music written between 1810 and 1814. There are several ‘first recordings’, including D1A, a 12-minute song called Lebenstraum which Schubert left unfinished and untitled, and also without any words! Inspired scholarship has recently revealed the poem which was in Schubert’s mind when he was writing it. He turned to the same poem again soon afterwards in D39, which is also on the disc. There are several Italian settings from Metastasio which Schubert prepared whilst studying with Salieri, and there are even two never-before-recorded duets in French deriving from operatic works by Gluck. Also included is the recently discovered Die Nacht, which doesn’t have a Deutsch number yet. Altogether this is a fascinating programme of virtually unknown music from the youth of one of the greatest composers who ever lived, and of far more than academic interest.

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).