Franz Liszt’s art songs form a fascinating repertoire. His lieder served as a vehicle for his own artistic and aesthetic development, but also as inspiration for his contemporaries, who soon followed in his footsteps in composing songs for voice and orchestra.

Devoted to the latter aspect of the composer’s output, this recording by Martin Haselböck and the Orchester Wiener Akademie presents Liszt’s original compositions for voice and orchestra, together with arrangements of his own songs and ones by Franz Schubert, thus embracing different aspects of his work, and bringing out the exceptional lyricism and expressive power that characterise them.

The repertoire is performed here by the ‘ambassador of song’, baritone Thomas Hampson, soprano Sunhae Im, mezzo-soprano Stephanie Houtzeel, and bass-baritone Tomasz Konieczny.

This album also enables listeners to discover previously unrecorded orchestral versions of Der Doppelgänger, Die Vätergruft, Weimars Toten, Le Juif errant and Der Titan.