"How I stirred myself in the night, in the night, and led myself away ...": Brahms' song collection op. 32 on a text by August von Platen begins with these brooding words, the singing voice proceeds slowly, the piano accompaniment outlines a gloomy scenario sparingly, almost haltingly. This cycle is rarely performed, although it outlines almost the entire expressive cosmos of Brahms' song oeuvre in nine songs.

Konstantin Krimmel, who can rightly be described as a shooting star in the serious baritone repertoire, who is the best young artist at the Opera Awards, a finalist in the Heidelberger Frühling "Das Lied" competition, young singer of the year in the trade magazine Opernwelt, BBC New Generation Artist and has long since arrived in the Lied Olympus, places this song at the beginning of his Brahms Lieder. It remains the only one from this collection op. 32, but the other selections take up the existential mood of Platen's settings, such as "Auf dem Kirchhofe".

Brahms is at the end of his program, which begins with songs by Liszt, including "Freudvoll und leidvoll", which, based on Goethe's famous text, sings of the feverish mood changes of lovers between "himmelhoch jauchzend, zum Tode betrübt". This is followed by a rarity: the selection from the "Romanian Songs" op. 7 by Eusebius Mandyczewski, an Austrian musicologist and composer of Romanian origin. He composed over 200 Romanian folk songs and first met Brahms, with whom he later became friends, in 1879. With Mandyczewski's folk songs, Konstantin Krimmel refers to his own German-Romanian roots.

Concert without intermission