night, sleep, and dreams
Christianne Stotijn has a wonderfully rich voice; perhaps too rich for some of Schubert's other songs but she's chosen well here. This is a cleverly conceived program on the general theme of night, sleep, and dreams; there's a symmetry to it, too, with the winds that open Waldesnacht returning in the final song. Clever, too, to put the Berg in the middle, a sort of eerie interlude between the more accessible material. Sample the Wagnerian "Gesang Weylas" and Schubert's dramatic murder-ballads, "Der Zwerg" and "Erlkonig", the latter given a truly scary performance.
