The Complete Songs of Hugo Wolf

Richard Stokes' erudite work provides an invaluable service to all performers and lovers of Wolf...his detailed notes, based not only on scholarship but on years of close association with the repertoire will be invaluable not only to those interested in Wolf and Lieder but the milieu in which he wrote and indeed the compositional process itself ... abrim with insights both scholarly and intuitive, Richard Stokes' book represents an important addition to art-song literature.

All in all it's a handsome volume that will prove an essential resource for anyone wishing to engage with this repertoire, whether as performer, researcher or music lover.

... Stokes's comprehensive account of Hugo Wolf's Complete Songs ...invites the reader to share an intensely personal understanding of works loved and studied for many years...he is as knowledgeable about the German poets whom Hugo Wolf set to music as he is about their musical settings....his densely filled book ...reflects his lifelong passion for German literature and Lieder, and his understanding of their close relationship exemplified in Wolf's works...The book is truly a compendium of information about Wolf's songs, their occasion, inspiration and reception...Stokes's Complete Songs is an indispensable reference work.