This is a fascinating concept album circling around the fragility of artistic sensibilities in German musical and literary romanticism. Two important pieces by Swiss composer Heinz Holliger, both inspired by Robert Schumann, are combined with a chamber work by Clara Schumann. They all intersect in the year 1853, when 20-year-old Johannes Brahms first visited the Schumann couple in Düsseldorf.

The initial piece, Clara Schumann’s three wonderfully melodic Romances for cello and piano, is followed by Holliger’s imaginative and multi-faceted homage to Robert’s “Romances” in the same scoring. “Gesänge der Frühe”, first performed in 1988, is scored for choir, orchestra and tape. Schumann’s last piano work of the same title from 1853 is superimposed in a most visionary way with texts from the late period of Friedrich Hölderlin – another romantic genius who fell prey to mental illness.