Composers: Berlioz, Liszt, Wagner
Compositions: Songs
Performers: Stephanie d’Oustrac ms,
Pascal Jourdan p
Catalogue Number: Harmonia Mundi HMM902621

Berlioz, Liszt and Wagner offer a microcosm of Romanticism, of song steeped in Schubert and Schumann, but standing on the cusp of something altogether larger and more sensual. That the works – Berlioz’s Les Nuits d’Été and La Mort d’Ophélie, Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder and songs by Liszt – are heard not in their orchestrations but with piano accompaniment adds to this sense of composers developing a still essentially classical form.

French mezzo Stéphanie d’Oustrac makes a virtue of a...