Max Meyer-Olbersleben, born in 1850 in Olbersleben, Thuringia, studied at the Weimar Orchestral School under Franz Liszt, and later at the Royal Music School in Munich under Gabriel Josef Rheinberger and Peter Cornelius. He settled in Würzburg as a professor of counterpoint and composition and served as director of the Royal Conservatory of Music until his retirement in 1920. During his lifetime, 114 works were published, primarily smaller forms such as choral works, songs, and piano pieces. Through his studies in Weimar and Munich, Meyer-Olbersleben was familiar with both the traditionalist and the new German musical language of that era, and thus the chamber music gems recorded here for the first time bear witness to profound Romantic sensibility and the spirit of a new musical awakening.