The idea that music begins where language ends goes back to literary Romanticism. In 1835, Joseph von Eichendorff was tracking the “song in all things” with his dowsing rod (“Wünschelrüte” in German, as is entitled one of his most famous poems), searching for the “magic word” that would be capable of transforming the world into song. Only a language that itself becomes music can speak about what it must otherwise keep silent. Thus the credo of romantic poetry.

But if language itself becomes music, what is music then to become? In the musical genre of the Lied, in which words and music are twinned, in which meaning and sound support, ensnare and sometimes infiltrate each other, the composers themselves answer this question. Every art song is basically a meditation on the relationship between music and language.

This is particularly true of the three Lieder cycles on this CD. The song settings by Gustav Mahler, Alban Berg and Jean-Luc Darbellay all revolve around an absence revealed by the language – and to which music provides an acoustic presence. Covering a period of eight decades, the three composers approach the fateful intertwining of love, loss and memory, finding a suitable musical language. The three Mahler, Berg and Darbellay song cycles presented by the Ensemble Orion are arrangements for soprano and string quartet or trio. This is the first recording of the works in a chamber music setting.