This ninth volume in the Hyperion Schumann Edition brings us to music Schumann wrote for children, and what a delight it proves to be. The Op 79 Liederalbum für die Jugend – twenty-nine songs and duets composed in 1849 – leads us on a journey through Schumann’s affinity with the mind and imagination of the musical child, a journey which here is sensitively puntuated by fifteen items from the Op 68 piano collection Klavieralbum für die Jugend. The complementary effect of the two makes for a satisfying, and generously filled, CD. (In the track listing above, songs given in bold, piano solos in italic.) As ever, the disc is accompanied by a weighty essay on the music and its background from Graham Johnson.

'The simplest songs, often unpromising on the page, are done with touching ingenuousness and candour. Both singers are natural storytellers with a twinkling sense of fun' (BBC Music Magazine)

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Recording details: January 2004; All Saints, Durham Road, East Finchley, London, United Kingdom; Produced by Mark Brown; Engineered by Julian Millard; Release date: November 2004;