Peter Cornelius was one of the most sympathetic of all those musicians who were drawn into the orbit of Wagner and Liszt, and it says much for this gentle, pious man that he was able to escape unscathed and without losing their affection. ‘He burns, and robs me of air,’ Cornelius once complained to his brother about Wagner. Breathing more freely, he developed an idiom which owes much to both mentors but also draws, in an individual manner, upon his German heritage. The choral works recorded here derive largely from the tradition of amateur choral societies, as James Deaville’s excellent note makes plain while also properly warning against amateurs attempting some of Cornelius’s more elaborate pieces (for instance, the three of Op 11). These are finely sung here, as in particular is the Requiem, which sets not the Mass for the Dead but a poem by another of Cornelius’s difficult friends, the poet Friedrich Hebbel (author of the darker elements in Schumann’s Genoveva libretto).
Cornelius also liked to draw upon earlier music as a basis for his invention, such as plainchant (in some solo songs with piano, Op 2) or, here, upon Lutheran chorale and a surprisingly successful pastiche setting of Schubert’s Death and the Maiden. Despite these contrapuntal forays, his manner in general is homophonic, rich harmonically, but lacking the intensity of which Wagner was capable, or the strange experimentalism of Liszt’s last phase. It is all very well written for voices, and if the music is never going to find a wide audience, it can through its admirable craftsmanship and touching sincerity have an appeal that goes on deepening with familiarity.'