Forming volume five of Hyperion’s Brahms edition, Christopher Maltman and Graham Johnson’s recording of the Magelone Romances is also this once-rare work’s second outing on disc this year and, as with its predecessor from Daniel Behle and Sveinung Bjelland on Capriccio, you are very aware of the artistic minefield the piece represents. The text consists of a series of songs sung by various characters in Ludwig Tieck’s 1797 novel Die Schöne Magelone. It’s hard to make sense of the narrative without knowing the book, and it has been suggested that Brahms viewed the work as a collection of individual songs, rather than a unified cycle. While Behle and Bjelland attempt contextualisation, Maltman and Johnson give us the music on its own, in a performance that is the more focused and emotionally detailed of the two, though some may prefer Behle’s romantic-sounding tenor to Maltman’s sexier, if more troubling baritone. Johnson’s excellent sleeve notes include an abridgement of the novel should you want the wider context.
