The Anniversay Edition, Various singers and pianists EMI Classics 688 6082 (8 CDs + CD-ROM) ****

Just seven years after the centenary of the death of Hugo Wolf, we’ve reached the rather quieter celebration of the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth. EMI are marking the occasion with this handsome collection of more than 200 of the composer’s songs.

The singers include the likes of Dawn Upshaw, Olaf Bär, Anne Sofie von Otter, Thomas Allen, and Ian Bostridge, as well as those giants of an earlier generation, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. Although the printed booklet is small, texts and translations are provided in PDF files on a CD-ROM. The stylistically diverse performing approaches make for a valuable tribute to a man who expanded and effectively redefined the potential of his chosen genre, creating songs that went where no others had gone before. See url.ie/57cs