Brave as it undoubtedly was of Shirai to begin her Strauss selection with the operatic effusions of Zueignung—and in the original high-voice key—her real gift is for finding the right inwardness in the slower, most rapt Lieder. Time stands still in the two outer songs of the wonderful Madchenblumen set (have the words held the music back from its rightful place in the repertoire?) and the long,. hypnotic phrases of Traum durch die Dammerung. Here, the extreme refinement of Shirai's husband Hartmut Holl provides the perfect air on which to tread, and when (as in ''Kornblumen'' from Madchenblumen), he seems to be slowing to a halt, the singer's ensuing lines provide the justification. Accompaniment of the superior kind, however, it remains; in the spotlight, Holl doesn't quite make his instrument sing—least of all in Morgen, but perhaps we are too used to the violin of the orchestral arrangement—and his emphasis in songs as different as Zueignung and the Kramerspiegel (Op. 66) excerpts veer on the wrong side of characterful.
The chronological selection is interesting, winding up with later curiosities: a sufficient taste of Kramerspiegers laid-on-thick satire of the music publishers' world, harmonic waywardness and whimsy transferred to the serious context of the Ophelia songs, Op. 67 and the briefest of Goethe epilogues. The Op. 10 set isn't complete, and so tracking by song rather than sequence would have been desirable. Sound is close and rich, capturing both the bloom of Shirai's lower register and the bright tone she can bring to lighter songs. In that respect, as well as in the true Lieder singer's sense of nuance, she reminded me of Ann Murray—another mezzo who might well join Shirai and von Otter in recording what has too often been regarded as territory for sopranos only.'