On the short list of the most ravishingly beautiful songs Schubert ever wrote, Labetrank der Liebe (Love's Reviving Potion, D. 302) must rank near the top. And on the short list of the songs that balance love and lust, Labetrank der Liebe must also rank near the top. That the song is so rarely performed or recorded is comprehensible only because a Schubertian short list stretches to something close to 100 songs. But, still, for singers who've done Du bist der Ruh one time too many, Labetrank der Liebe would provide a lovely alternative.

A two-verse strophic song on a text by Johann Stoll, Labetrank der Liebe was composed on October 15, 1815, the same day he composed seven other songs including the sublime Die Sternenwelten and his other ravishing Stoll setting, An die Geliebte. Stoll's poem is of the extravagantly Romantic variety, full of declarations of eternal love, images of angelic choirs, and phrases like "whispering kisses, drunk with ecstasy." Thankfully, Schubert was only 18 at the time and able to set such twaddle without blushing. Indeed, he did more than simply set it, he enshrined it in music of transcendent beauty and simplicity. With the piano accompaniment reduced to a handful of chords and a few scattered phrases, everything in the song rests on the vocal melody. And Schubert does not disappoint. The melody is somehow both chaste and sensual, spiritual and sexual, pure with the passion of the innocent; a vocal line floats gently through ethereal realms near the top of the singer's range, touching softly but with endless longing all the peaks and valleys of love and lust.

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