“A hopeless mishmash of all sorts of droll, sulky, dirty and worthless street songs, plus a few musty church songs.” There is probably no comparable collection of texts that triggered discussions of an equally controversial nature during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Of all the musical adaptations based on this book of 723 songs, those by Gustav Mahler are probably the most famous, yet Des Knaben Wunderhorn was an inspiration for many other composers, too. Wolfgang Holzmair is both a brilliant singer and an expert in discovering associations and interrelations. His intense and masterly performance, skillfully accompanied by Thérèse Lindquist, sheds light on the different interpretations by composers from Mendelssohn to Schumann and Strauss, from Mahler to Zemlinsky and Schoenberg.