The great Elisabeth Schumann began her career at the Hamburg Opera before becoming the star member of the Vienna State Opera in 1919. Schumann’s pure, silvery voice and innate gift for communicating with her audience were legendary. This Naxos re-issue brings together all of the soprano’s pre-war recordings of Lieder by Mendelssohn, Schumann and Brahms. The Mendelssohn and Schumann recordings were made when Schumann was a member of the Vienna State Opera, the happiest and, in operatic terms, the most successful time of her career. The Brahms Lieder, though dating from the summer of 1938, a particularly difficult period in her life, when Schumann knew that she could never return to Vienna, remain among the best recordings she ever made.