The Austrian composer Wilhelm Kienzl (1857-1941) - also a pianist, conductor, musicologist and writer on music - enjoyed the esteem of his contemporaries particularly for his vocal music. But his star has waned over the past century, and only a handful of his 238 songs have had recent recordings. In style they range from the simple and folk-like to the dramatic and quasi-operatic; their harmonic world likewise embraces both the diatonic and chromatic, with hints of the influence of Schubert, Schumann and Brahms and a foretaste of later composers. The four song-cycles recorded here treat the grand themes of life: love, loss, death and man's interaction with nature.
