It's hard to know where to begin in praise of this disc. It has several centres of excellence, the first being Schäfer's beseeching, urgent account of the Mignon settings from Goethe's WilhelmMeister that make plain her pre-eminence today among sopranos in Lieder. Next comes Ainsley's winningly fresh account of An Silvia. You may be surprised at how wholly new-minted Ainsley's ardent tones and Johnson's elating piano manage to make of such a hackneyed song. Schäfer and Johnson do the same service for Horch,horch! die Lerch'. Then comes the extraordinary discovery of this volume. As a rule, Johnson has excluded unaccompanied vocal pieces from his project; happily, he has made an exception in the case of the astonishingly original Seidl setting Grab und Mond, which touches on eternal matters, or rather the permanence of death, a message starkly expressed in typically daring harmony. The London Schubert Chorale gives it a spellbinding interpretation and also contributes positively to a performance of another Seidl setting, the better-known Nachthelle, where the high-lying tenor lead provides no problems for Ainsley. There have to be reservations over the work of Richard Jackson; his tone is inadequate to the demands of Der Einsame, the unjustly neglected Totengräberweise and Der Wanderer anden Mond, which call for a richer sound-palette.
Throughout, Johnson's playing is a source of pleasure and enlightenment. The recording is well-nigh faultless.