Orfeo: C776082B

At the 1987 Salzburg Festival recital the Slovenian mezzo Marjana Lipovšek concentrated on 19th-century works, straying only for her encores, with an impressive range of vocal colour and languages. Her pianist was Elisabeth Leonskaja, an accompanist entirely her equal. Their encores comprised Strauss's Die Nacht, another song by Brahms, an adaptation of a Slovenian folksong by the singer's father, Marijan Lipovšek, and, finally, Schubert's setting of Hölty's Seligkeit - a suitable description of the atmosphere that had developed between artists and audience over the course of the evening. It is an atmosphere that comes across in this live recording, the vitality of which is further underlined by Marjana Lipovšek's lively introductions to her encores.