LIEDER & BALLADEN: COMPLETE ED

LOEWE Lieder and Balladen (complete) • Cord Garben (pn); soloists • CPO 777 355-2 (21 CDs + CD-ROM: 1428:21 Text and Translation) If you love Schubert, you should also love Carl Loewe, his immediate heir. And, just as Hyperion has graced the world with its 40-CD complete Schubert Lieder anthology, cpo has now likewise completed and assembled in one box its complete recordings of Loewe’s solo Lieder and ballads. (Unlike the Hyperion Schubert set, this does not include duets, trios, etc.) Several of the individual releases have previously been reviewed in Fanfare . (Vols. 7–9 and 11–14 are listed in the Fanfare Archive; see print issues 21:3, 22:1, 22:3, 23:4, 24:2, and 25:1. All but the last were reviewed by John Bauman; Henry Fogel reviewed Vol. 14.) Therefore, in the interests of brevity (and at the sensible request of the chief editor), I will not discuss individual works or singers in detail, but rather provide a summary of the project as a whole, with further br