Twenty fives years separate this new version of the Dichterliebe ("Poet's loves") and the legendary recording made by this same Christoph Prégardien with the piano-forte player Andreas Staier. The style is the same, but the singing has been clarified. At the age of 60, Christophe Prégardien's voice has retained a youthful timbre and stunning freshness. This new album offers plenty of serenity thanks to its stripped-down vocal line, sustained and carried with help from Prégardien's main current partner, Michael Gees, on the piano. There are a few wrinkles here and there; sometimes the text obliges the German singer to work (Ich grolle nicht); but the whole thing, overall, is splendid. Christoph Prégardien is a storyteller. The love stories by Schumann and Wagner to which he lends his voice are simply human and free from any expressive overload. Listen to the stunning Sechs Gedichte von Nikolaus Lenau und Requiem, Op. 90 (Six poems by Lenau and Requiem). Here, the strange melancholy that's peculiar to this cycle takes on a pained note. In Requiem, Schumann seems to catch a glimpse of his own end and Clara's widowhood, through the lens of the sad story of the tragic loves of Héloïse and Abélard. "At once supplication and fervent act of grace, borne on celestial harp arpeggios, the song rises like the flèches of gothic cathedrals in a fervent 'arsis' towards the Lord." (Brigitte François- Sappey). Wagner's Wesendock-Lieder are set between these two Schumannian masterpieces, which slightly predate him. Considered by the composer himself to be simply "sketches for Tristan and Isolde", they express all the delicacy and torment of a lover's heart, in a romantic vein that Wagner would exalt to the point of paroxysm in his later works. © François Hudry/Qobuz