In a personal note accompanying this release, baritone Thomas Oliemans defends Brahms’s Romanzen aus ‘Die schöne Magelone’ as a true song-cycle, describing it as ‘a musical and textual roller coaster worthy of binge-listening, with a clear beginning and an end, but in between a wholly adventurous musical universe of its own’.

The ‘aus’ in Brahms’s title, he adds, is significant: these are romances from Ludwig Tieck’s chivalric novel, now standing proudly alone, and don’t represent an elliptical retelling of the novel itself. Certainly, Oliemans and his pianist, Malcolm Martineau, demonstrate their conviction at every turn: these are serious, intelligent performances. The baritone is a persuasive, involving storyteller (he’s an excellent guide through ‘Wie soll ich die Freude’, for example), and Martineau’s playing is full of detail and subtlety.

What is it, then, that prevents me from enjoying this release more? Alas, the basic quality of Oliemans’s baritone is a drawback. As Richard Wigmore noted reviewing an album of Schumann (Channel Classics, 4/16) – and as I also found in his Winterreise (12/19) – there’s a ‘grittiness’ to the voice that means he is unable to offer the tonal variety and, in such more lyrical numbers as ‘Sind es Schmerzen, sind es Freuden’ or ‘Liebe kam aus fernen Landen’, vocal seductiveness. A quick comparison with either Christian Gerhaher on Sony or the youthful John Chest on Alpha, to name but two recent recordings, serves to demonstrate what’s missing.

The coupling is a rarity: the first recording, as far as I’m aware, of the Regenlied cycle. It comprises settings of four poems by Klaus Groth, later all reworked and included in Acht Lieder und Gesänge, Op 59, that weren’t published in their original form until 1997. The committed, intelligent performances here represent a useful addition to the catalogue.