Das irdische Leben - (Earthly Life)

'What strikes me, in performing this programme, is of course its intrinsic musical (and not merely ethnomusicological) value and its richness; but also its expression of a folk imagination whose themes are far removed from the preoccupations of the loquacious poetasters who inhabited the Romantic salons. The great majority of the poems set to music here - which are often anonymous, since they are directly derived from oral tradition - deal with frustrated love, arranged marriages, mothers mourning their sons killed in battle, harvests too poor to nourish the family, betrothed couples ardently awaiting their union; here too is nature with its succession of mysteries and symbols. These songs contain a whole universe of piety, fatalism and superstition, sometimes recounted with an amused distance; they express both fabled folk wisdom and a poetic lyricism in resonance with the elements: in short, all of "earthly life" is there' (Salomé Haller)