All these works are settings of texts by Friedrich Holderlin, but in contrast with Mitsuko Shirai's absorbing Holderlin song recital (Capriccio, 12/94) none of the composers here seems to have found it possible to set his words without glossing them. Reger adds half a line, transforming a prayer for hope into a confident assertion that it will be found; thus mournfully descending lyrical phrases can turn into serene rising ones. The use of a soprano soloist (Reger asks for a contralto) brightens the optimism still further, not inappropriately when the singing is as ample and as idiomatic as it is here.
Brahms faithfully reflects Holderlin's contrast between the radiant existence of the gods (music of wonderful warmth and richness) and the wretchedness of mankind (an outburst of wild terror) but then repeats Holderlin's ''but for us no resting place is given'' almost like a prayer for rest, and by so doing brings back, albeit with a shadow now over it, the noble grandeur of his opening pages. Abbado gives the work a majestic reading, diminished only very slightly by the fact that the otherwise admirably spacious recording robs his choir of their consonants.
Even Wolfgang Rihm, whose epigrammatic and allusive style is well suited to Holderlin's sketches and unfinished poems, rises to his highest eloquence in a 'setting' that has a title (''Empedocles on Etna'') but no words. His nine movements have an average length of barely a minute, but their brief gestures can imply, like a drawing of only a few strokes or indeed like Holderlin's own enigmatic fragments, something of much larger scale. It is for this reason, I'm sure, that he refers at one point to a Schubert song, at another to a chorale: they 'work', these fleeting hints, very much as Holderlin's detached phrases (''Overnight in the village. Alpine air. Down the street. House. Reunion. Sun of home'') strike resonances from each other.
Only Strauss sets Holderlin 'straight', in 1921, finding in three of the odes an idiom that drew from him a distinct foretaste of his late operas. They are richly lyrical, ardent and sumptuously written for the soprano voice: echt-Strauss, in short, and why they should be almost unknown is baffling. No one who loves the Vier letzte Lieder could possibly resist them, certainly not when sung as beautifully as they are here. At first hearing you may find Karita Mattila's voice a little recessed into the orchestra (again, extremely rich, on the very edge of over-richness but not over that edge, I think); on second thoughts you may well think it a pretty accurate rendering of how these songs would sound in a concert-hall.'