This is a hauntingly beautiful disc, and I see no reason to alter the unreservedly favourable opinion I had of it when it was first issued seven years ago. It was actually recorded 15 years before that, when Schreier was in his absolute prime and when he was performing the cycle frequently with Ragossnig in an edition prepared by JD. That is justified by the fact that many of Schubert’s songs appeared with arrangement for guitar accompaniment during the composer’s lifetime, and he apparently expressed an affinity with the instrument. Be that as it may, the joint arrangers have done their job so perceptively that the guitar – particularly when played as finely as it is here – seems the most apt accompaniment for the voice.
Schreier honed his own interpretation to suit the intimacy of the instrument. Nowhere is that more apparent or appropriate than in “Pause” with its mention of a lute. But, throughout, the pair seem to have a wonderful rapport in their polished, wholly integrated reading. Schreier, before and since, has made several other recommendable recordings of the cycle, most recently the one with Schiff, which show him refining his interpretation even further; but here, when he was in pristine voice, the seamless line of his singing, the subtle delicacies of his impeccably produced tone, the wholesale identification with the youth’s plight as he palpably feels pleasure and pain through the aegis of Schubert’s inspired music, create an unforgettable impression that reaches its apex in “Trockne Blumen”. There – quite without exaggeration – the youth’s terrible sorrow is poignantly expressed. The recording, in Dresden’s Lukaskirche, is exemplary.'