R. Strauss Orchestral Songs

View record and artist details

Record and Artist Details

Composer or Director: Richard Strauss

Label: DG

Magazine Review Date: 11/1999

Media Format: CD or Download

Media Runtime: 49

Mastering:

DDD

Catalogue Number: 445 182-2GH

Tracks:

Composition	Artist Credit
(4) Letzte Lieder, '(4) Last Songs'	Richard Strauss, Composer Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra Claudio Abbado, Conductor Karita Mattila, Soprano Richard Strauss, Composer
(4) Lieder, Movement: No. 2, Cäcilie (wds. Hart: orch 1897)	Richard Strauss, Composer Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra Claudio Abbado, Conductor Karita Mattila, Soprano Richard Strauss, Composer
(4) Gesänge, Movement: Verführung (wds. J. H. Mackay: 1896)	Richard Strauss, Composer Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra Claudio Abbado, Conductor Karita Mattila, Soprano Richard Strauss, Composer
(4) Gesänge, Movement: Gesang der Apollopriesterin (wds. E. von und zu Bo)	Richard Strauss, Composer Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra Claudio Abbado, Conductor Karita Mattila, Soprano Richard Strauss, Composer
(5) Lieder, Movement: No. 1, Freundliche Vision (wds. Bierbaum: orch 1918)	Richard Strauss, Composer Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra Claudio Abbado, Conductor Karita Mattila, Soprano Richard Strauss, Composer
(8) Lieder, Movement: No. 1, Waldseligkeit (wds. Dehmel: 1901, orch 1918	Richard Strauss, Composer Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra Claudio Abbado, Conductor Karita Mattila, Soprano Richard Strauss, Composer
(6) Lieder, Movement: No. 5, Frühlingsfeier (wds. Heine: 1903-06, orch	Richard Strauss, Composer Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra Claudio Abbado, Conductor Karita Mattila, Soprano Richard Strauss, Composer

Author: Alan Blyth

Strauss’s Op. 33, written in 1896-7, is entitled Vier Gesange, written for voice and orchestra. Following Mahler’s example, Strauss was pioneering a new format. The Gramophone Database has no complete recording of this set, so it is a pity that Mattila and Abbado, after giving splendidly rich-hued accounts of two of these large-scale effusions, failed to perform the other two, especially as the disc offers short measure. Mattila rises to the challenge of these far-ranging pieces, adept at refining her tone to a pianissimo in the quieter moments of the Song of Apollo’s Priestess, the subtler of the two. Elsewhere, she is radiant in the love-outpouring, Cacilie, written for the young composer’s wife Pauline, and goes to the heart of Waldseligkeit, which Strauss’s biographer Norman Del Mar rightly suggests pre-echoes the mood of the Four Last Songs.
In that final, lifelong evidence of Strauss’s infatuation with the soprano voice, Mattila – unlike Voigt last month – is one of the few among recent aspirants to challenge the hegemony of past interpretations. She has the tonal refulgence, the control over line and tone and the identification with the valedictory texts that they require. Given the Berlin Philharmonic’s luxurious support, this is a version to set beside that of Janowitz with the same orchestra in terms of sheer beauty. But there is more to these songs than that. This time my comparisons were also with those of three sopranos (all on EMI, incidentally), who delve deeper than Mattila into the text’s meaning: Popp’s overwhelmingly sensitive reading, Jurinac’s translucent tone and meaningful diction, Schwarzkopf’s refined identification with music and words. Then the last two – Busch, in particular, a masterly conductor of the score – with markedly faster tempos, avoid the occasional sense of self-indulgence in the new version, unhelped by a soft-focus recording that places the orchestra too far back in the sound picture and muddies instrumental detail, a mistake avoided on the Janowitz/DG disc. None the less, Mattila admirers, among whom I count myself, should hear her beautiful singing.'