This recording brings together Florian Boesch, one of today’s foremost Lieder interpreters, and Malcolm Martineau, who is widely recognized as one of the leading accompanists of his generation. With a partnership honed over many concerts and several recordings together, including a Grammy-nominated Die schöne Mullerin, the pair turn their attention to two of the greatest song cycles of the nineteenth century. The recording opens with Schumann’s Op. 39, Liederkreis, settings of Joseph von Eichendorff’s poems, and finishes with Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, written around forty years later. The songs selected all tell, in varying hues, of the Romantic individual’s sense of alienation from others and of transcendence, or the longing for it. An expressive and accomplished storyteller Boesch’s perceptive phrasing and exquisite range of colours is well matched by Martineau’s virtuosic and perfectly synchronized accompaniment.