Juliane Banse, Aleksandar Madžar

Tief in der Nacht brings together the soprano Juliane Banse and the pianist Aleksandar Madžar in songs by Alban Berg and Karl Amadeus Hartmann. Berg's early songs, written while he was still studying with Schoenberg, trace his path from late romantic lieder to the modern idiom. Hartmann's Lamento is a rarely recorded cantata after Andreas Gryphius, linked to Berg by its origins.

The album was recorded in March 2009 at the Historischer Reitstadel in Neumarkt, produced by Manfred Eicher with Peter Laenger as engineer, and Paul Griffiths wrote the booklet essay. Banse, born on the German side of Lake Constance and raised in Switzerland, made her ECM debut in the title role of Heinz Holliger's opera Schneewittchen. Her ECM recording of Kurtág's Kafka-Fragmente won the Edison Award and the Midem Classical Award. Madžar, from Belgrade, took third prize at the Leeds Competition in 1996, and this was his first recording for the label.

The programme opens with the Sieben frühe Lieder of 1905 to 1908, songs of night, dreams and love such as Nacht, Schilflied and the Rilke setting Traumgekrönt. Nine Jugendlieder from 1904 to 1908 follow, among them Goethe's Erster Verlust and the brief Johannes Schlaf settings Winter and Regen. Then come two settings of the same Theodor Storm poem, Schließe mir die Augen beide, from 1907 and 1925. Heard side by side, they show how far Berg travelled in eighteen years. Hartmann made Lamento in 1955 from the solo passages of a choral work of 1936 and 1937 that he had originally dedicated to Berg. Its three parts, Elend, An meine Mutter and Friede, set poems by the seventeenth-century Silesian poet Gryphius. In his notes Griffiths calls it “a big piece, one that thoroughly engages the two formidable musicians who present it.”

Michael Tanner, reviewing the disc for BBC Music Magazine, wrote that Banse brings to the Berg songs “her intense voice, focused and lovely.” He also called Lamento a fascinating work and regretted how neglected Hartmann's music remains.

CD, ECM New Series 2153, released on 15 October 2010, with liner notes by Paul Griffiths in English and German.