With their new Brahms album on Sony Classical, Christian Gerhaher and his pianist Gerold Huber are back as leading Lied interpreters of our time. On their new album "Brahms: Lieder", recorded live at the Reitstadel Neumarkt, Christian Gerhaher and his long-time duo partner Gerold Huber do not deal with the song oeuvre of the great Romantic composer for the first time - their debut album in 2002 already contains the "Vier ernste Gesänge" op. 121, and their version of the "Romanzen aus L. Tieck's Magelone" op. 33 was released in 2017. For the first time, however, they focus on individual songs and cycles that bear witness to Johannes Brahms' intensive efforts to create a new "folk tone". Embedded in the social developments of the 19th century, Brahms attempted here to establish the art song as a reflection of his imagined history, as a memory and image of a naturalness that was disappearing - very similar to the ambivalence between tradition and progress that can be felt in his instrumental works. As always, Gerhaher and Huber lend these songs a new perspective in their interpretation in an ideal interplay of text and music. The recorded works include the exemplary cycle of "Neun Lieder und Gesänge" op. 32 and the posthumously published and rarely heard reconstructed early version of the "Regenlied" cycle on poems by Klaus Groth, as well as well-known songs such as "Sehnsucht" and "Von ewiger Liebe". The introductory text is by Laurenz Lütteken, one of the most renowned musicologists of our time.