German baritone Christian Immler appeared for the first time at last year’s Festival with an astonishing recital of Mozart and Beethoven songs. Joined again by the inspirational French pianist Anne Le Bozec, he makes a welcome return for this programme that highlights one of the greatest of all poet-composer synergies, that of Eduard Mörike and Hugo Wolf. When Wolf encountered Mörike’s poetry, he was in the midst of a deep creative block. These immensely varied poems, which encapsulate experiences from the physical and earthbound to the spiritual and sublime, unlocked something in Wolf, who wrote that ‘I am working with a thousand horsepower, from early morning into the night without interruption… They are masterpieces.’ The 53 songs he wrote all stand as some of the finest works of the entire repertoire, with a musical style that owes much to Wagner but remains unique and responsive to the inflection of every word. Christian Immler and Anne Le Bozec are the perfect exponents of this repertoire and their selection from the Mörike Lieder reflects the boundless invention of these songs.