This recording features one of Switzerland's brightest vocal stars, mezzo-soprano Yvonne Naef, performing masterpieces by romantic giants Hector Berlioz and Richard Wagner. Yvonne Naef regularly performs with eminent conductors such as Harnoncourt, Boulez, Maazel, Russel Davies and Levine and has appeared at all the major European operas, including the Vienna State Opera, the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden and the Scala in Milan. She is accompanied by the Capella Istropolitana under the direction of Swiss conductor David Heer, who also leads the Radio Symphony Orchestra Pilsen in the performance of two instrumental chef d'oeuvres by Wagner and Gustav Mahler: Siegfried Idyll and the Adagietto from the fifth symphony.

The three songs by Berlioz are very much bound to the programme of their texts. Zaïde features prominent Spanish inflections (including castanets in the refrain)and alternating passages of melancholy and sensuality. La captive was origi- nally a strophic song with an exquisitely shaped melody that Berlioz revised it into a through-composed song characterized by an enchanting stillness and beauty. Unexpected harmonic turns enliven the gently flowing melody of La belle voyageuse the fourth song from the collection entitled Irlande.

The «Wesendonck Lieder» are settings of five poems by Mathilde Wesendonck, the wife of one of Wagner's benefactors who became his mistress during the 1850's. Wagner himself said of these intimate gems that «I have never produced anything better than these songs, and very few of my works will be able to stand comparison with them.» Wagner's beautiful songs (originally for voice and piano)are enhanced by Hans Werner Henze's orchestration; it seems as if the words are addressed only to Richard Wagner and the music only to Mathilde Wesendonck.