Malcolm Martineau is the brilliant initiator of this new one-of-a-kind series on Linn. The Brahms Songbook has set the unprecedented goal to record Brahms’s lieder by complete opus number. For its first instalment, Martineau has teamed up with famed Dutch baritone Thomas Oliemans in the expansive Romanzen aus Magelone, Op. 33 . Composed between 1861 and 1869, the youthful, inevitably romantic fifteen-song cycle tells the story of a noble warrior, a Neapolitan princess and a sultan’s daughter. The operatic-like cycle goes through the emotions of each character as the tale unfolds. Oliemans’s busy stage career and ‘communicative singing style’ (The New York Times) make him the perfect fit. The album concludes with the virtually unknown ‘Regenlied’ cycle: four songs that were later included in Acht Lieder und Gesänge, Op. 5 9. Volume 2 will see Dame Sarah Connolly and Hanno Müller-Brachmann share the bill.

Johannes Brahms is an icon. Say Johannes, and you know you are talking about Brahms. The successor to Beethoven, the sober man who valued seriousness, the champion of classical traditions, a close friend of the Schumanns. But how well do we really know Brahms? How close does he let us get to him in his music? In his Requiem we go in search of the human Brahms and in the music of his mentor and good friend Robert Schumann.

The music of Frank Martin is most often characterized by exquisite craftsmanship, intelligence, subtlety, a tonal language that is neither overtly modernist nor overtly Romantic, and a finely calibrated but reserved, chaste expressiveness, which are not attributes likely to create wild popularity with broad audiences. For his admirers, though, his voice has a potent individuality and emotional depths that engender fierce loyalty, and this album should be like catnip for them. Its attractive program adds to its appeal; it includes an alternate, rarely heard version of his most popular work, Petite symphonie concertante arranged for full orchestra as Symphonie concertante; a genuine rarity, the suite from his opera Der Sturm, based on The Tempest, for baritone and orchestra, and Six Monologues from "Jedermann" for baritone and orchestra, with a text by Hugo von Hofmannsthal.