This CD featuring the Deutsches Liederspiel once again enriches our comprehensive Herzogenberg edition. The Austrian Heinrich von Herzogenberg draws on a tradition inaugurated by Johann Friedrich Reichardt with the premiere of his Liebe und Treue, a stage work designated as a Liederspiel, at the Berlin National Theater on 31 March 1800 and consisting mostly of love songs of fine lyrical feeling. The audience’s interest was supposed to be roused »for the simple and the plainly pleasant with little pieces of song character.« Ideas for the Deutsches Liederspiel may possibly have come to Herzogenberg from the Liebeslieder-Walzer op. 52 for four vocal parts and piano by Brahms, a work premiered in Vienna in 1870. Along with the parts – in Brahms a vocal quartet and piano, in the Liederspiel two solo voices (soprano and tenor), mixed choir, and piano four hands – this also applies to the entire character of the composition. More than any other composition by Herzogenberg, the Deutsches Liederspiel was a great success from the very beginning – perhaps precisely because of its direct and pleasant manner. In any case, it made Herzogenberg’s name known to a broader circle and ended up becoming his most performed work. The song cycle Aus verwehten Blättern by his unknown contemporary Arnold Krug, who also returns to the tradition of the Liederspiel, rounds off this CD.