Catriona Morison - The dark night has vanished - All Music

BBC New Generation Artist Catriona Morison makes an impact with this recital of German-language songs that manages to both feel familiar and to break new ground at the same time. Morison strikes a domestic, intimate tone that she sustains throughout the program, even in the memorial Lenau songs of Robert Schumann at the end, and the dimensions are aptly defined by her accompanist, Malcolm Martineau. However, these Schumann songs -- the Six Poems and a Requiem, Op. 90 -- are not often performed (they were written when Schumann believed the poet Nikolaus Lenau had died (he was still alive, but died as the songs were premiered), and Morison also chooses excellent lesser-known songs of Brahms and Grieg (setting German poetry). The highlight is the group of songs by Josephine Lang (1815-1880), a student of Mendelssohn who had one of her songs published in Schumann's Neue Zeitschrift für Musik. She was quite prolific, having had to make a living as a composer and piano teacher after her husband's death, but the upswing in attention to music by women has mostly left her behind. Thus Morison's six selections are especially valuable, and they're enjoyable besides. Listen to the adept way the humor is handled in Die Schwalben, Op. 10, No. 3, where it turns out that the narrator is not really crazy about swallows, or try the full-blooded take on Goethe's Mignon. Morison's voice is perfectly suited to these, and even if there's a certain sameness to her sound, it's a sound that will appeal to many listeners, and the early commercial success of this album is no surprise.