Like hardly any other musical genre, the art song is created to express extreme human states of mind.

The preoccupation with dying and death, with the loss of loved ones and with one's own transience is therefore always at the centre. Baritone Hanno Müller-Brachmann and pianist Hendrik Heilmann have chosen Mahler's Kindertotenlieder, Frank Martin's Jedermann-Monologe and Vier ernste Gesänge by Johannes Brahms from among the rare cyclical works that deal with this theme in different and yet always deeply moving ways.

The Kindertotenlieder are certainly among the most moving works of music and poetry ever produced.

Martin's Everyman Monologues begin where Hoffmansthal's famous Everyman, already abandoned by all earthly friends, looks towards his end.

Brahms takes texts from the Bible as a model for his Four Serious Songs, from the litanies of transience in Ecclesiastes to the "Song of Songs" from the First Letter to the Corinthians.

For this recording, presented in MDG's legendary 2+2+2 surround sound on SACD, Brachmann and Heilmann find a personal approach to the works that brings their own consternation deeply home.