Star German baritone Matthias Goerne has been careful with his choice of pianists throughout his 25-year recording career. His collaborators in his days with Decca included Vladimir Ashkenazy and Alfred Brendel. Then he moved to Harmonia Mundi and Elisabeth Leonskaja joined him for a Schubert album, and over the decades he has worked regularly with Lieder specialists Eric Schneider, Andreas Haefliger and Christoph Eschenbach. For his latest project he looked towards the Yellow Label and its peloton of leading young pianists, choosing the Canadian Jan Lisiecki as his partner for an anniversary overview of Beethoven songs.

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“The piano parts in Beethoven’s songs are relatively complex,” he explains in the liner...