A year after Schubert's death, his publisher Tobias Haslinger published a collection of 14 songs that Schubert had written down in rapid succession shortly before his death and had probably conceived in part as a song cycle.

As the composer's last great work, this cycle soon came to be called "Schwanengesang". The German bass-baritone Hanno Müller-Brachmann and his piano accompanist Jan Schultsz add Schubert's song "Herbst", which is closely related to the cycle. The programme is complemented by six early songs by Schubert's contemporary Carl Maria von Weber.

Hanno Müller-Brachmann was a member of the ensemble of the Berlin State Opera from 1998 to 2011 and has also appeared at the Bavarian, Hamburg and Vienna State Operas as well as the San Francisco Opera. He has sung with the London, Vienna and Berlin Philharmonic Orchestras, the Staatskapelle Berlin and Dresden, the Orchestre National de France, the Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles Symphony Orchestras under conductors such as Thielemann, Haitink, Barenboim amongst many others.

In addition to concert and opera, Hanno Müller-Brachmann has a great passion for Lied and has given recitals in Berlin, Graz, Amsterdam, Hamburg, Paris and Lausanne, at London's Wigmore Hall, at the Schubertiade in Schwarzenberg, at the Berliner Festwochen and at the Edinburgh Festival, among others.