Helen Watts – Lieder Recital

Presented on CD for the first time and newly remastered, a pair of Romantic Lieder recitals by the Welsh contralto who inherited the mantle of Kathleen Ferrier.

However, Watts was also an accomplished recitalist, and her gifts in this area have often been overlooked. The present release compiles the first two song recitals she recorded, in 1963 and 1964. In the world of Schumann's Frauenliebe und -Leben she enters intimately into each song's shades of feeling, and she brings a special passion to the three Mignon songs of Hugo Wolf. The earlier recital couples more Schumann - notably the late and haunted Five Songs of Mary Stuart - with favourite Lieder of Brahms such as Ständchen and the Op. 91 pair with obbligato viola (Cecil Aronowitz). The anthology is completed with more Brahms, the Alto Rhapsody she recorded in Geneva with Ernest Ansermet in 1965: solemn yet warm and deeply human, a perfect testament to her art and to the praise of her modern counterpart, Nathalie Stutzmann: 'an extraordinary contralto'.