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Songs for voice and piano in Swiss German? In the world of clichés Swiss German is barred from entering the sacred temple of the classical song for voice and piano. Such a language is surely too twee, too simpering and too sentimentally cloying to claim a place for itself in the solemn purlieus of the art song. If dialect is used in songs at all, then it is in folksongs, not art songs – this at least is the traditional view. And yet this view is wrong – or at best it is incomplete! Soprano Sybille Diethelm and pianist Fabienne Romer have gone on a search and gathered a veritable treasure trove full of Swiss German piano songs – and made this project their affair of the heart. "The golden age of Swiss dialect songs for voice and piano was the early decades of the twentieth century. Meinrad Lienert (*21 May 1865 in Einsiedeln; † 26 Dezember 1933 in Küsnacht) was a key figure in the newly discovered world of an art inspired by local dialects. An explosion of linguistic colours, sly wit, poetic elegance and a portrayal of man and nature deeply rooted in his own experiences are combined in his prose writings as well as in his poetry to virtuosic effect, triggering a veritable wave of enthusiasm on the Swiss literary scene of the early twentieth century – and his poems have also been set to music many times. With the present album we hope to breathe new life into the 'masterly settings' that were 'inspired' by Lienert’s poems. Featured here are ten composers who with one exception were born in the final third of the nineteenth century. All of them set themselves the task of capturing in their music the unique blend of dialectal lightness and poetic depth that characterizes Lienert’s verse." - Sybille Diethelm and Fabienne Romer