Customer Reviews

Richard Strauss: Vier letzte Lieder (Four Last Songs) ~ Kanawa / Solti

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

To listen to this kind of music is like floating on a cloud. The great master of Strauss himself, Sir Georg Solti, does an amazing job of playing the piano himself at the ripe age of over eighty. His influence on Kiri Te Kanawa is apparent. She sounds completely at home and sings with conviction and feeling. Her voice sounds sublime and the recording is an absolute favourite. This is a must for any Kiri fan and indeed for anyone who appreciates the genious of Sir Georg Solti and Rikhard Strauss.

Four Last Songs are a miracle of man's creative inspiration, and every time I listen to them, it never loses freshness of the first hearing. If you love this music, Karajan/Janowitz, Tennstedt/Popp, Szell/Schwarzkopf versions are must, each one very different yet with some magical moments.

Solti/Kanawa version may not have the other-worldly quality of Popp or Janowitz versions, but it is outstanding in its own right, with her richly expressive and mature singing and Solti's intimate accompaniment with orchestra.

Other Lieder with the conductor at the piano are even better. Unlike those accompaniment specialists, Solti's playing is more articulate and the piano is not treated as mere accompaniment, but as orchestra. The soprano sings each song with admirable subtlety and much warmth.

It is easy to accumulate several recordings of these devastatingly beautiful orchestral lieder. Out of the many versions I've heard, including Schwarzkopf, Della Casa, Janowitz, Norman, Isokoski, and both of te Kanawa's, I think if I were forced to take only one, te Kanawa/Solti would be it.

True, te Kanawa's earlier version with the LSO and Andrew Davis finds her in a more athletic, more youthful voice. However, the recorded sound is truly substandard--thin and constricted, with little warmth or low frequencies. I have recordings of the LSO from almost two decades earlier that have more lifelike sound! By contrast, te Kanawa's version with Solti is superbly recorded, with the VPO captured in all their glory. Also, a reviewer below claims that Davis's tempos are "more energetic than the aging Solti's." I don't know how one could reach that conclusion. Look at the timings, for starters: they are virtually identical in the first two songs (within three seconds of each other) and Davis is slower by thirty seconds in "September" and a full minute and a half in "Im Abendrot." And I would argue that Solti gets the orchestral burst of dying sunlight at the beginning of the last song as good or better than anyone: slow enough to be majestic, but flowing enough to allow the voice to enter in at a natural pace. Davis just stretches it out, to no effect, and the awful recorded sound doesn't even allow one to luxuriate in Strauss's orchestration.

The same reviewer below makes the valid point that te Kanawa's voice is a little frayed in the later recording. But remember, a little fraying on a voice that is one of the supremely beautiful voices of the last century means that it is still extraordinary! And there are interpretive virtues that more than offset this slight loss of radiance. In fact, given the subject matter of these songs, a voice just past its peak would not be so out of place....

And that is where I think the later version outstrips the previous one. These songs are not vocal exercises or mere virtuosic showpieces; they are songs of death and remembrance from a composer at the end of his life. If the performers do not communicate that trembling, anxious, nostalgic feeling, then they are not succeeding. As pure and as beautiful as te Kanawa's tone was in the Davis recording, her tone is by any standard still beautiful here and her ability to convey the meaning of the text has only grown. Take, for example, the way her voice catches and slightly wavers on the last syllable of "wandermuede" (weary from wandering) in the second to last line of "Im Abendrot." She sings the note correctly in the Davis version, but she more effectively makes the communicative point (a quiver of fear as one approaches the abyss of death) in the Solti version.

So, to sum up: the only thing the Davis version has in its favor is te Kanawa's more youthful voice. And don't get me wrong, it is still very much worth hearing for just that; however, for more emotional singing that is still tonally gorgeous, better conducting, and much better recorded sound, I would pick the second of te Kanawa's versions.

Kiri Te Kanawa was as ever-present in Strauss operas in her prime as Schwarzkopf was in hers. Like Schwarzkopf she made two recordings of the ineffable Four Last Songs. The Gramophone lists this second version as being from 1991, which would make Solti 79. It's a collaboratoin from the heart. Solti clearly adores his soloist and later sits down at the piano to accompany her in 13 additional songs.

I've owned both recordings of the Four Last Songs, and I find myself disagreeing with the Gramophone reviewer, who said that the first is 'not a patch' on the second. He discounts how gloriously fresh and alluring Te Kanawa's voice was on the CBS recording, and how much more energetic Andrew Davis's tempos are than the aging Solti's. In fact, even if you don't mind the slight fraying of the voice here, Solti's accompaniments, both with the wonderful Vienna Phil. and at the piano, are rhythmically staid and musically lackluster. It's true that Te Kanawa had grown as a musician, but only once in a lifetime does a singer have the gift of owning a perfect Strauss soprano, and that's what we hear on the earlier recording, not this one.

Wanted to hear the impeccable Kiri te Kanawa, but found the music of Richard Strauss to be far less than awesome. I can only presume that I have nothing in common with Adolph Hitler, who thought that Strauss was the epitome of art.