Robert Schumann, William Byrd, Henry Purcell, Delian Quartett, Claudia Barainsky

Im wachen Traume takes its title from a line in the first song of Schumann's Frauenliebe und Leben. That cycle is the centre of this programme by the Delian Quartett and soprano Claudia Barainsky. The Schumann is heard in a version for soprano and string quartet by Aribert Reimann, framed by songs and instrumental pieces of William Byrd and Henry Purcell. None of this music was written for string quartet, and most of it appears here in first recordings.

Reimann conceived the arrangement in 2018, after hearing the cycle with strings in his head while falling asleep. He completed it in under two months for Barainsky, his former student, and the quartet. He died in March 2024, three months before the release, and the album is dedicated to his memory. The Delian Quartett, founded in 2007, recorded the programme in October 2021 in the concert hall of Abtei Marienmünster, in a co-production with Deutschlandfunk produced by Guido Gorna. Baritone Mikhail Timoshenko joins in two pieces. Italian composer Stefano Pierini arranged the Byrd pieces and Purcell's vocal music, while the Pavane and Chaconne are played as Purcell wrote them.

Reimann moves the piano part into four voices, thinning it out and adding colours the keyboard cannot give, such as pizzicato and vibrato. In Er, der Herrlichste von allen the song moves through chordal exchanges over a trembling cello, and An meinem Herzen, an meiner Brust is lit by glassy harmonics. On either side, Byrd's Lullaby, my sweet little baby sets Barainsky and Timoshenko against the story of Herod's decree. Near the end, Dido's lament When I am laid in earth sits between Purcell's two G minor pieces, before the enlarged ensemble closes with Hear my prayer, O Lord.

Writing in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Wolfgang Schreiber noted that the arrangement was the last work Reimann completed. He called the idea of framing the Romantic songs with early English music bold and right. Tyran Grillo of Between Sound and Space singled out the soprano: "She is an embodied vocalist who understands that texts must be first spoken to be sung." For Jörg Lengersdorf on WDR, this was one of the rare arrangements that add something to the original instead of taking it away.

CD edition, ECM New Series 2743, released on 21 June 2024, with a booklet essay by the quartet's violinist Andreas Moscho in German and English.