Hindemith is generally held to have found his mature style with the song-cycle Das Marienleben of 1923. (Even so, he himself found it unsatisfactory and published a lengthy essay in carping stylistic self-criticism to accompany the 1948 revision.) These two short cycles, both written very fast in the year preceding Das Marienleben, make the maturing process seem at once less orderly and more interesting. They resemble the more familiar cycle in their lyricism and sober use of counterpoint, but they are much more overtly expressive, especially if the comparison is made with the revised Marienleben. The cycle Die junge Magd (''The young maidservant'') is a sequence of six sadly poignant songs about a girl betrayed in love, whose poised lines and subtle word-setting are all the more effective for their economy of means. The scoring is for flute, clarinet and string quartet, but Hindemith's way is often to thin out his texture as the emotion intensifies, leaving the voice to lament alone or a mere couple of instruments to evoke the Winterreise-like images with which the text abounds: the rustling of withered grass, the scrabble of rats in a deserted courtyard, the melancholy voices of birds.
Des Todes Tod (''The death of Death'') is more darkly rhetorical yet still sparer: the voice is accompanied by two violas and cello, in the third and last song (rather close to Vaughan Williams in its gravity as well as its melodic accent) by a solo viola only. As in the other cycle there is an economy of expression as well, a use of the simplest possible means to increase the emotional burden of the material; the slightly posturing pessimism of the texts is quite transcended by Hindemith's sombre eloquence.
These cycles are important re-discoveries, in short (Die junge Magd has been seldom performed; Des Todes Tod was withdrawn after its first performance and not published for many years) and it is good to have them in performances of such quality. Both soloists are admirable artists (though both are placed slightly too far forward in the otherwise lucid recorded perspective) and their instrumental colleagues sound as though they play chamber music together regularly. No translations of the poems are provided, alas, and the total playing time of the disc is far from generous, but I hope neither drawback will put you off: these neglected and very beautiful songs deserve to be far better known than they are.'