Baritone Thilo Dahlmann couples the innocence and beauty of Brahms' Volkslieder with the the despair and mourning of Glanzberg's Holocaust Lieder.

Thilo Dahlmann and Hedayet Djeddikar. "I sow, I see no seed, and I remain mournfully silent at home." With these words of Johann Mayerhofer full of mourning and melancholy from Schubert's "Abendstern", we as performers look back on the content of this CD. It juxtaposes compositions that could hardly be more opposite. The past century, like so many before and after it, has not only sown good seeds. Norbert Glanzberg had to experience one of the greatest human catastrophes of the century himself, the Holocaust. Long after the end of the war, he managed to clothe the horror he suffered in music through the words of other persecutees and victims of National Socialism. Music that could not be more beautiful in many places. A beauty that is only painful to bear in view of the texts set to music.

In selecting the pieces for this recording, we were guided by Norbert Glanzberg's compositional approach of countering horror with beauty. Therefore, folk song settings by Johannes Brahms form the beginning of this CD. Songs that, like few other songs in the Romantic lied repertoire, can embody the greatest possible innocence and impartiality in text and music.

It is precisely this contrast that illustrates in our eyes the breaking of human and civilisational culture through the horrors of the Holocaust. A "break-up" that Norbert Glanzberg has masterfully set to music in his cycle "In Memoriam".