revieiw by Tim Ashley @Guardian

Carl Loewe (1796-1869) was one of music's great mavericks. He combined a music directorship in Stettin with a successful career as a touring singer-songwriter, specialising in Gothic ballads that contained alarming insights into the extremes of the human psyche. In his day, his admirers included Goethe (who thought his setting of Erlkönig greater than Schubert's), Wagner and Prince Albert. Austrian baritone Florian Boesch is arguably his finest interpreter today, and this disc is mesmerising. An expressionistic vocal actor, Boesch has the ability to change the sound of his voice to fit the character he is portraying; when he gets to the big dialogues like Erlkönig, Edward or Herr Oluf, it's hard to believe that only one person is singing. Loewe was by no means always a doom merchant, and Boesch also takes us on journeys into comic ribaldry in Graf Eberstein and Tom der Reimer, as well as singing a number of his songs, all of them beautiful and inexplicably neglected. For Loewe, the pianist was as important as the singer, and Roger Vignoles is in his element with the high drama of it all. A benchmark recording, and essential listening.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/may/12/loewe-songs-and-ballads-review