STRAUSS 4 Last Songs. Alpeinsinfonie
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Richard Strauss, Wolfgang Rihm
Genre:
Vocal
Label: C Major
Magazine Review Date: 05/2015
Media Format: Digital Versatile Disc
Media Runtime: 103
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: 726 408
Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
Ernster Gesang (Serious Song) |
Wolfgang Rihm, Composer
Christian Thielemann, Conductor Staatskapelle Dresden Wolfgang Rihm, Composer |
(4) Letzte Lieder, '(4) Last Songs' |
Richard Strauss, Composer
Anja Harteros, Soprano Christian Thielemann, Conductor Richard Strauss, Composer Staatskapelle Dresden |
Malven |
Richard Strauss, Composer
Anja Harteros, Soprano Christian Thielemann, Conductor Richard Strauss, Composer Staatskapelle Dresden |
(Eine) Alpensinfonie, 'Alpine Symphony' |
Richard Strauss, Composer
Christian Thielemann, Conductor Richard Strauss, Composer Staatskapelle Dresden |
Author: Hugo Shirley
The camera direction reveals the conductor as cool and calm in his podium manner until the moving ‘Sunset’, played with impassioned warmth, and the rest of the performance seems to trace a seamless line towards those final pages, with Thielemann avoiding all temptations to bombast or excess en route. That’s not to say that the passages of excitement or exhilaration are given short shrift: the arrival at the summit is properly heady and breathtaking, the storm is awe-inspiring, as are the screw-turning build-ups preceding it, while the orchestra offers glittering virtuosity when required elsewhere.
It’s a performance, however, that underlines primarily the work’s philosophical underpinnings and its symphonic logic; others might offer more thrills (and spills), but few offer such coherence. Thielemann’s own Salzburg DVD might just surpass it, by offering that extra excitement as well, but that doesn’t have quite such an appealing coupling.
If the ‘Last Songs’ on the cover might seem like a misprint, it reflects the fact that the Famous Four are here joined by the very last song, ‘Malven’ (1948), in a delicate and sensitive orchestration by Wolfgang Rihm. Some might object to the usual arrangement being upset – ‘Malven’ is inserted between ‘Frühling’ and ‘September’ – but it makes a touching addition to a set whose order and make-up were never entirely fixed.
At flowing tempi, Anja Harteros offers wonderful performances, and the voice – perhaps initially a little wirier of tone than in her earlier Four Last Songs with this orchestra under Fabio Luisi (Sony, 4/08) – is still beguilingly soft-grained; but the performances are distinguished primarily by the singer’s sheer musicality, the phrasing and the intelligent use of the words. The final phrases of ‘September’ and ‘Im Abendrot’, in particular, are exquisite.
Rihm’s own Ernster Gesang provides a suitably sincere and autumnal opening to what was clearly an outstanding concert.
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