Death is present in so many of Schubert's lieder, and those appearances provide the starting point for the five songs that make up David Lang's Death Speaks. Lang went through the 600-plus texts that Schubert set, extracting all the lines that are either attributed explicitly to death, or to characters representing him, translating them "roughly" into English and creating lovesong-like lyrics. The settings are wonderfully spare and insistent, with accompaniments from guitar, piano and violin. Shara Worden, lead singer of My Brightest Diamond, is the vocalist, recorded in a close perspective, while the other work on the disc, Depart, offers a very different kind meditation on death. It was commissioned to be played in a French morgue, a peaceful setting in which the bereaved could see their loved ones for the last time. A sequence of slowly changing drones for wordless women's voices and cello, makes the perfect foil for Lang's naggingly memorable songs. (Andrew Clements / The Guardian)
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