Dahler's Franz Brodmann fortepiano is the perennial attraction of Haefliger's Lieder releases. Its subtle sweetness of inflection marries well with the intimate, open responses of the vocal performance and, in songs like Die Gotter Griechenlands, An die Leier and Der Einsame, the fingers touch in their own telling details of colour and texture.
The voice lets the side down. Too often it sounds dry at the top and in legato, with vowels pinching slightly at the crest of a phrase and with too much use of that bare, staring open tone on single words like the opening ''Heilge'' of Nacht und Traume. Haefliger's reluctance to darken or lighten the voice with any alacrity induces a sense of languor long before the final Wanderers Nachlied. One longs for him to waken ardour with the thrumming keyboard of Stimme der Liebe, to phrase more vividly.
Haefliger is as his best in the more spare writing of songs like Nachtstuck and Der Winterabend, where his even tone carries the vowels through pungent harmonic shifts and over the side-stepping accompaniment. He also gains where the voice is obliged to be more sprightly: Der Einsame and Fischerweise take on new life, though Heiden-roslein remains one-dimensional.
The voice is, on the whole, recorded too far forward of the keyboard: at times, most notably at the start of Herbst, it sounds over-resonant in its church acoustic, dwarfing the fortepiano's contribution.'