What a revelation this disc actually turns out to be. Lott's voice brings wonderful subtlety and intensity to the music, Isolde's death scene in particular.

The Schumann Quartet's pianist, Christian Favre, has made these clear, practical transcriptions (rather than arrangements, the bookletnote stresses) inspired by Chausson's Chansonperpetuelle, and with a view to adding to the chamber music literature from the Romantic world of song. So expect a scaled-down report on the works concerned rather than Schoenberg's interventionist way with Johann Strauss or Brahms, or the risk-taking panache of Liszt's operatic adaptations.
Not the least virtue of the exercise is that we get Dame Felicity Lott in repertoire she might otherwise not have attempted. Her performance of the Liebestod – or 'Verklärung' as we should call it – is such an object lesson in engagement with the text, sensuality and controlled power that one might imagine the late Carlos Kleiber (whose favourite Marschallin she was) contemplating a further recording of the opera with her.
The Wesendoncks have a similar sensual (and lean) intelligence, devoid of the stuffy Victorian abstractions that Mathilde's dreadful poetry can often produce in performance. And, if this is not the ideal-est voice for the darker corners of the Rückert-Lieder, you'll need to hear what Lott makes of the poems. The Tristan Prelude is fine too; it's just that it doesn't have a voice part.
Good recordings, and 100 per cent worth it for the singing.

Her performance of the Leibestod is an object lesson in engagement with the text, sensuality and controlled power.