Andrew Clements [Guardian, 24 April 2006]
Some of the great Lieder cycles are regularly sung by both men and women – Mahler’s Ruckert Songs and his Kindertotenlieder, for example – but others are more gender specific. Schumann’s Dichterliebe, and Schubert’s Winterreise and Schˆne M¸llerin are rarely tackled by women, while the voice embodied in both Schumann’s Frauenliebe und Leben and Wagner’s Wesendonck Songs is so unambiguously female that few men attempt them. By including both of these in his latest recital, then, the baritone Matthias Goerne was clearly sending out a message, though its meaning was hard to define.