Franz Schubert's Fair Maid of the Mill as a premiere recording? Anyone who makes this claim on the international record market would inevitably be confronted with a storm of outrage. Unless, of course, the release announced as a world premiere has something unprecedented to offer – and the present CD production certainly does. Instead of the original version for voice and piano, which has been performed countless times, cpo offers a new, thoroughly successful rendering. The accompaniment, if the instrumental part can be called that at all, is played by the highly successful octet Ensemble acht. Star tenor Klaus Florian Vogt sings the twenty moods of the enamoured miller, who in the end drowns himself due to his despair... The expanded sound palette is the work of the accomplished and insightful arranger and composer Andreas N. Tarkmann, who has illuminated the romantic nuances of the colourful piano part with an almost poignant feeling for poetic drama. A world premiere!