The Magelone cycle is full of strange contrasts. As an artistic edifice, it has a striking singularity. Brahms took his source from the true beginning of literary Romanticism. He sought a text that, for its part, pointed back further into the past, paying reverence to a folk tone steeped in tradition. Brahms composed trend-setting music for the piano, but in vocal terms considered proximity to the folk song appropriate. ‘Brahms, the progressive musician’, as Arnold Schoenberg termed him in an eponymous essay, showed himself from his typical side in the Magelone Songs.

The rising Austrian star for Lied Recitals, Paul Armin Edelmann, take intensive care of this song cycle. Together with the famous Austrian theatre and movie actor Julia Stemberger these CDs includes beside the Brahms Romances also the complete literary text by Ludwig Tieck.