>‘I am a sucker for late-Romantic song or perhaps for histrionic fairy tales of derring-do and blushing maidens’, states baritone Roderick Williams in the introductory notes for his recording of Die schöne Magelone. Such an explanation is necessary: this is hardly dress-for-success repertoire for any baritone, whether up-and-coming or fully established. But the passion and commitment behind this recording are palpable at every turn. As much as I loved Christian Gerhaher’s recent Die schöne Magelone on vocal and interpretative terms and will certainly return to it for its Germanic authority, Williams has put together the kind of Anglo-friendly package that has been missing from the Brahms discography of late.

Die schöne Magelone isn’t a song-cycle as much as it’s a narrated saga punctuated by songs that comment on the story rather than actually telling it. Understanding the music is dependent on knowing how it fits in the story about a prince who finds his beloved, loses her and finds her again. Thus one need not struggle so much with the dated verse used in the songs because the narration has skilfully set up the song’s place in the saga. No, this isn’t a crutch or an easy way out, but the way Die schöne Magelone was meant to be – and is for German-speaking audiences. Having that context also elucidates some of Brahms’s unconventional forms that are ostensibly through-composed but are actually built from discrete fragments, somewhat in the spirit of Schumann’s Dichterliebe. But for those who don’t want to experience the narration on every listening, the second disc has the Magelone songs only plus, in contrast to these early Brahms songs, the darker, late-period Four Serious Songs.

Of course, the clever packaging would mean little without performances of Williams’s calibre. His medium-weight baritone makes every phrase clean, clear and unaffected. The gravity of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau’s recordings isn’t missed since these are youthful songs and don’t really benefit from being delivered from the viewpoint of what Brahms would become later on. Combined with the clarity of Roger Vignoles’s pianism and Williams’s excellent feeling for the German language, the music makes sense particularly in some of the more impulsive flights of inspiration that, in other performances, can sound a bit eccentric. The darker vocal colours aren’t always there for the heroic passages, but that’s hard to fault considering how emotionally present Williams is for the more lyrical Schumannesque songs. The fact that Williams also reads the narration – with a once-upon-a-time friendliness but never sounding like a bedtime story – means that spoken and sung text feel all of a piece.

Even more distinctive, in its way, is the Williams/Vignoles reading of the Four Serious Songs. Obviously they take higher keys than Hans Hotter in his classic EMI recording (Warner, 9/52), who has the gravity of some Old Testament prophet that Williams would be foolish to attempt at this point in his still young vocal life. Williams simply sings them with his own kind of rhetoric and, again, is a clear prism through which the songs emerge. Sound quality is excellent, leaving plenty of air around the voice but never losing immediacy.