In her autobiography Alma Mahler-Werfel said that she had written ''hundreds of songs'' and a piano sonata (conceivably other things as well?) before she even met her first husband, yet the 14 songs recorded here are apparently all that survive of her work as a composer. The Five Lieder dated 1910 were all written considerably earlier; they were published after Mahler had abandoned his insistence (almost a conditional clause in their marriage contract) that she should give up composition (''is it impossible for you to regard my works as your own?''). Two of the Four Lieder published in 1915 also date from before their meeting (both were 'edited' by Mahler himself), but two written after the lifting of his ban were added. Of the remaining set only the central song can be dated accurately (1915), so we cannot as yet tell when or even whether Alma finally gave up composing, but a clear development and deepening of her musical personality is apparent if one listens to her songs chronologically.
None of them sound especially like Mahler (why should one expect them to?). They sound like the work of a talented pupil of Zemlinsky (which she was, of course), cultivating a graceful, miniature medium in the earlier pieces but attempting broader gestures and a bigger imaginative span in the third collection. The word-setting is sensitive, the piano-writing delicate if occasionally not quite idiomatic (close motivic working in the centre of the keyboard once or twice sounding rather opaque), but the vocal lines 'fit' the voice beautifully: they must be very rewarding (though by no means easy) to sing. An awareness of Wolf and Schumann is apparent in the first set, but it is already filtered through an individual, rather literary (and rather fin-de-siecle Viennese) sensibility, and the same individuality enables her, in the second set, to acknowledge the presence of Schoenberg without succumbing to it. Her own personality is at its strongest, however, in the third and apparently final group, whose bolder oratory and strong lines are prompted by an ambitious choice of texts (among them two big poems by Novalis and some eloquent verses by her future husband Franz Werfel). At least a couple of pieces from each of the earlier collections, and all five of the last, could be programmed without apology alongside most other songs of the same period and place, and I hope that they will be.
They are adequately but not ideally served by these performances: Isabel Lippitz has a light, rather pallid soprano which lacks both the variety of colour that the earlier songs need and the amplitude and passion that the later ones demand; her pianist, too, is a bit prosaic. Still, one must be grateful to them for drawing these songs to our attention; they deserve it. Not much gratitude, however, to CPO for their presentation: no translations are provided, and even the German texts are inaccurate and gracelessly set out; the recorded sound is perfectly adequate.'