Catriona Morison - The dark night has vanished - Gramophone

The album takes its name from one of the songs by the little-known Josephine Lang (1815-1880), who was championed by composers in high places, had intermittent success in her own lifetime and is only now being discovered in our time. Though she hails from the era of Mendelssohn, Lang has a less contained, more Schumannesque manner that is used with such unfiltered conviction you would think she invented this harmonic world. Her balance of words and musical expression is effortless; her use of form is distinctively seamless. Expressive mileage that Lang draws from repeated words never feels laboured. I particularly love Lang’s discreet humour in ‘Die Schwalben’, with words by Christoph August Tiedge that seem to be typical nature-painting about swallows until the poem’s protagonist admits she really can’t stand the birds. All parties concerned – Morison, pianist Malcolm Martineau and the composer – are at their best amid the lyrical flow and emotional depths of ‘Abschied’.