“One should sing with the fingers,” or “If you want to play piano, you need to learn to sing” —such statements and similar quotes by...

“One should sing with the fingers,” or “If you want to play piano, you need to learn to sing” —such statements and similar quotes by Frederic Chopin have been passed down by many of his students from their piano lessons with him. With a nearly Baroque-Classical aesthetic, he preached the idea of an analogy between music and language, and from this he paid meticulous attention to phrasing and articulation. It thus comes as no surprise that contemporaries and epigonic composers happily used the vocal habitus of many of his piano works to arrange them as actual art songs. Several particularly successful examples, written by Luigi Bordese, Pauline Viardot and anonymous composers were compiled for the present release by pianist Wolfgang Brunner, long-standing director of the Salzburg Hofmusik, with singers Lydia Teuscher, Olivia Vermeulen, Karol Kozlowski und Andreas Schmidt.