Die Schöne Müllerin 

Franz Schubert

Markus Miesenberger tenor, Christian Haimel guitar

Challenge Classics / HQ|NORTHSTAR / Turtle Records®

Catalogue CC720074

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About the Album

Opening new Spaces

It is now 2026. The first publication of Franz Schubert’s song cycle Die schöne Müllerin (The Fair Maid of the Mill) took place 202 years ago; the 200th anniversary of its composer’s death will be commemorated in the year 2028. Schubert’s musical setting of this love triangle based on the poems by Wilhelm Müller tells the tragic story of a young miller’s apprentice, the miller’s beautiful daughter, and the apprentice’s rival in love, the hunter. It continues to be heard, admired, and performed in concert halls around the world, in innumerable interpretations. There are too many complete recordings to count exactly—by our reckoning at least 230. The cycle’s very ubiquity poses an inescapable question for any singer: does this work, whose popularity in the sphere of art song is unsurpassed, really need yet another recording? Interpreting Die schöne Müllerin is a lifetime’s work for a singer: it demands continuous transformation and constant development, while experience, artistic maturity, and the voice itself all change unceasingly over time. Just as the little brook in the cycle follows its winding path, artistic growth refuses to follow a straight line, remaining fluid and unpredictable. This very situation opens up spaces for new interpretations, as our recording demonstrates. Ever since the publication of Deutsch’s catalogue of Schubert’s works, musicologists have debated the question of whether Schubert can be regarded as a composer for guitar: there is just a single work where he explicitly demands the instrument. And yet he probably owned at least two guitars, and many of his songs (including four from Die schöne Müllerin) 6 were published with accompaniments arranged for guitar during his lifetime, which he must have accepted or at least tolerated. Among Schubert’s circle of friends was the poet Franz von Schlechta, who after Schubert’s death transcribed no fewer than 39 of his songs for guitar, which survive in manuscript copies. These arrangements, originating in the composer’s closest circle of friends, show beyond doubt that the use of the guitar as an accompanying instrument for Lieder was not only accepted, but regarded as modern, fashionable, and desirable.And so we return to the question of whether there is space for another recording of this pinnacle of the Lieder repertoire. For us, all became clear in the very first rehearsal with Christian Haimel and his gut-strung Biedermeier guitar: in this combination, employing a faithful reconstruction of a historical instrument, a new recording is nothing short of indispensable! One can only truly understand the fashion for guitar in Schubert’s Vienna in the company of an appropriate instrument, a guitarist of unimpeachable skill, outstanding arrangements (here, by Konrad Ragossnig and John W. Duarte), a suitable recording venue with superb natural acoustics, complete background silence, and a sound engineer who himself ‘opens up new spaces’. Bert van der Wolf’s recording church in Heerewaarden in the Netherlands proved to be the perfect setting for a project that aimed to transform a famous, popular, and frequently performed composition into a new, intimate, even modernistic version, with a completely new sonic perspective. Have we succeeded? Only you can decide. But we are sure of one thing:you have probably never heard Franz Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin sound so pure and un-compromised. In this instrumentation, the famous cycle truly becomes an authentic reflection of the soul of a broken man. Enveloped in feelings of freedom, love, passion, desire, and utter despair, guitar and tenor voice, in all their lightness and fragility, soar towards heaven.

Markus Miesenberger

April 2026

Album tracks

FRANZ SCHUBERT (1797-1828)

Die schöne Müllerin, Op. 25 (D 795)

Arrangement for guitar and high voice by Konrad Ragossnig and John W. Duarte.

Arranged from the Original Piano Part, published by Edition Schott.

[1] Das Wandern 2:55

[2] Wohin? 2:09

[3] Halt! 1:51

[4] Danksagung an den Bach 2:05

[5] Am Feierabend 2:39

[6] Der Neugierige 3:09

[7] Ungeduld 2:43

[8] Morgengruß 3:17

[9] Des Müllers Blumen 3:04

[10] Tränenregen 4:21

[11] Mein! 2:56

[12] Pause 3:54

[13] Mit dem grünen Lautenbande 2:18

[14] Der Jäger 1:08

[15] Eifersucht und Stolz 1:39

[16] Die liebe Farbe 3:38

[17] Die böse Farbe 1:59

[18] Trockne Blumen 3:05

[19] Der Müller und der Bach 3:25

[20] Des Baches Wiegenlied 6:26