Schubert’s Four Seasons is a recital disk on the BIS label by soprano Carolyn Sampson and pianist Jioseph Middleton.  It contains a generous 75 minutes of music made up of twenty Schubert songs about the seasons and nature generally (also death… there’s lots of death).  Most of the songs are less well known ones but there are some more frequently heard one likes Die Forelle, Im Frühllind and Der Hirt auf dem Felsen (which also features Michael Collins on clarinet).

Sampson has a pleasant, rather bright, soprano and she’s good with text.  Middleton, of course, is a master of this repertoire and Collins is no slouch.  It’s well recorded too with plenty of detail and a natural balance between voice and piano.  So, if one wants a recording of the somewhat rare songs on the disk sung by a soprano this is a good choice.  It comes with a booklet with bios, texts and translations.

It’s being released as an SACD and in MP3 and FLAC/ALAC/WAV at standard and 96kHz/24bit resolutions.  I listened to the high res WAV version.

Catalogue information: BIS 2703.