Diepenbrock: Complete Songs

Now best known for his ‘symphonic songs’ such as the Hymne an die Nacht, Alphons Diepenbrock won the admiration of his contemporaries Mahler and Strauss for the confident, post-Wagnerian handling of large orchestral forces in support of vocal lines soaked in passion and grief. Unlike them, however, he was chiefly inspired by poetry, and his output is dominated by vocal works, which are particularly fine in atmospheric evocation. Even when writing for the sparer medium of voice and piano, Diepenbrock laid his songs out expansively, underscored with yearning Wagnerian harmonies, and any listener in search of repertoire beyond the songs of Mahler and Strauss is in for a treat. Diepenbrock read widely, and drew on many sources for his songs: classical antiquity, religious texts from the Middle Ages, old Dutch poems, German Romantic choruses, modern French poetry and contemporary Dutch writers. The shared theme of these very different styles in his hands was a tendency towards mysticism and