Hans Sommer was a respected composer in his day and achieved widespread popularity with his songs, especially the melodic and catchy pieces in Op. 4 and Op. 5. One biographer described him as ‘a direct predecessor of Hugo Wolf… the lines that start out with Schumann and Liszt meet in Sommer’, and his friend Richard Strauss considered him ‘an outstanding artist’. Quirks of publishing resulted in Sommer’s work being forgotten for a century, with the sensitive light and shade of his songs Op. 30 and Op. 40 remaining virtually unknown. As a result, this album includes mostly world premiere recordings.