Following her album of Strauss songs with orchestra, soprano Diana Damrau - described by France's Classica as "first and foremost a liedersängerin" and by The Times as "gifted in projecting drama and emotion ... a peach of a singer"- turns to songs by Liszt in the company of distinguished pianist Helmut Deutsch.
In choosing to visit Liszt's songs, the German soprano is venturing into repertoire that, perhaps surprisingly, remains for the most part outside the mainstream of recital programming. Over a period of 45 years, Liszt wrote 70 or so songs, making two or more versions of over a third of them. Damrau's collection includes his most frequently heard songs, written to German and Italian texts by, among others, Goethe, Heine and Petrarch. They include the three demanding and exalted Sonetti del Petrarca, the haunting fairytale `Die Loreley', the evocative `Die drei Zigeuner' (which reminds us of Liszt's Hungarian blood), and the lyrical, wistful `O lieb, so lang du lieben kannst', which was to become a `greatest hit' for the composer in its adaptation for solo piano - Liebestraum No 3.
