KEY POINTS:
Hyperion's 10th instalment of the complete Schumann songs is a cornucopia of delights for any lieder-lover.
The high-profile Kate Royal heads the cast, provides the glam cover shot and delivers a Liederkreis cycle brimful of character.
True, the moonbeams may be a mite rough-edged in Mondnacht, but there are compensations.
Royal can deal out thrilling ecstasy when singing of the ancient gods pacing half-sunken walls in the song Schone Fremde and shows us that utter simplicity is the key to the melancholic heart of Wehmut.
Graham Johnson's piano responds with brilliant evocations of Schumann's world.
Johnson is the kingpin of this whole project. Listeners already familiar with any of the previous nine volumes will know to expect immaculately researched and generous booklet notes, placing each song in its literary context.
Other young singers involved include German soprano Lydia Teuscher who catches the bitter-sweet regrets of Die Nonne and goes enthusiastically rustic with Austrian mezzo Daniela Lehner in the rather jolly Landliches Lied.
A few tracks on, veterans Felicity Lott and Ann Murray sing wistfully of the various joys of nature in the composer's Three Duets of Opus 43, and Schubertians may well raise an eyebrow when the final of Schumann's songs seems to echo the first of Schubert's Die Schone Mullerin.
Lott and Murray also give us his four Madchenlieder, settings from the child poet Elisabeth Kulmann (1808-25) in which the composer's pared-down late style is perfect for the ingenuous simplicity of the writing.
Two melodramas, lustily recited by Christoph Bantzer over Johnson's storming piano, could be curiosities for some, although the first, a grim saga of a Moorland boy's prophetic dream, looks forward to the chilling plots that regularly put a tingle into Twilight Zone.
Ensemble pieces include a Zigeunerlied in which triangle and tambourine add splashes of gypsy colour, and Bei Schenkung eines Flugels, one of Schumann's very last compositions.
This vocal quartet was written in 1853 to celebrate his final birthday gift of a grand piano to his wife, Clara. Within a year, Schumann would be in an asylum and the song's images of the survival of art over worldly beauties is particularly poignant.
* The Songs of Schumann Volume 10 (Hyperion CDJ 33110, through Ode Records)
