Customer Reviews

Strauss: Four Last Songs

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A classic performance restored to the catalog at budget price, featuring the young voice of Te Kanawa completely free of the strain that would creep into her later recordings of the same music. Lovely renditions of "Morgen" and other orchestral Lieder fill out the program nicely. My only caveat is that Andrew Davis does not elicit more fervent, open-hearted Straussian sweep from his orchestra, as do Karajan, Szell, Ackermann, Solti from theirs. They're very good indeed, but just a tad polite. That said, this performance should figure in any serious collection along with Janowitz and both recordings of Schwarzkopf. Highly recommended.

This is one of the albums that really turned me on to Kiri Te Kanawa. If you had seen her perform at the Met you would have been struck with both the beauty and smallness of her voice. On record, the smallness was not an issue, especially here. The recording holds up nicely after all these years, the only problems being a somewhat fast tempo and bombastic production from Andrew Davis. I played this record to death and then started all over again when it was featured in a climactic scene in Peter Weir's film, The Year of Living Dangerously. Since Kiri, I have collected six or eight of these collections of Strauss' four last songs and can recommend very highly Cheryl Studer, Gundula Janowitz and the fine old recording by Elizabeth Schwarzkopf. Although her talent does not measure up to these performances, I am grateful to Dame Te Kanawa for introducing me to this cycle. Oh, by the way, the new cover is awful, and the sound quality of the CD is a bit dead and lacking in the vibrancy of the old vinyl. Since the original sold well, there must be quite a few decent copies out there for buffs. But these are personal fine points, I am just really glad to have this album back in print.

This remastered recording is really beautiful. The songs have been reordered with the title tracks coming first. This is much better if you are just wanting to hear them alone and the rest when you have more time. Kiri te Kanawa's voice is sublime. I would reccomend this recording to anyone.

I know and own a dozen versions of this wonderful song cycle and while I can find much to admire in them all, it is to three in particular that I return again and again: Gundula Janowitz with Karajan, Lisa Della Casa and this disc, featuring Kiri in her young prime very ably accompanied by Andrew Davis.

The absolute purity of her tone and clarity of her diction effortlessly create the specific mood and sound-world for each of the songs, first conjuring up a vision of golden maple trees against cerulean skies, then gradually drifting into the more nebulous and shadowy world of sunset as a metaphor for aging. There is nothing to fault in the singing; I laughed wryly at a review accusing this of sounding like a "student exercise"; would that we had more such vocal students whose art conceals art. The voice for this music needs either to be clear, clean and pure - in other words of the voice type to be heard on my three preferred accounts - or grand, sumptuous and noble, as per Jessye Norman and Renee Fleming; both work in that they suggest transcendence, release and the sense of a disembodied soul freed from its mortal cage and rejoining the Maker in paradise. There needs to be a kind of joy expressed in the act of singing itself and for that the singer has be free of all technical limitations and sound utterly relaxed and released; Te Kanawa does that because she knows her voice will do whatever she needs it to.

Davis is not as brisk as Böhm or as indulgent as Masur and Karajan; I find his tempi to be perfectly judged to suit his singer in that simplicity of utterance is the key. The LSO of course play wonderfully and the sound is excellent.

A special disc and a great memento of a beloved singer now semi-retired.

Superb singing. I have nine different recordings of Strauss's "Four Last Songs" by various artists and Kiri te Kanawa's is by far the best

I bought Strauss Four Last Songs because I wanted to hear them and Kiri Te Kanawa sings them well, but to me without Andrew Davis support this CD is nothing. Some have said that Davis isn't supportive enough and others have said that he is bombastic! I would say sanity is somewhere in between.

Kiri Te Kanawa's voice is a perfect soprano and as somewhat pointed out sounds somewhat small, but it doesn't really enter as a factor in this recording. My favorite Four Last Songs is "Im Abendrot" followed closely by "Fruhling." Both offer a feeling of resignation. That good or bad Strauss himself as a character as if in some kind of movie of the 20th century has had a career as a composer and these are his final words. Strauss makes Kiri sing! Her voice soars into the heavens and the clouds looking into the stars of the afterlife. Even with a tinge of earthbound sadness at times this version of the Four Last Songs is convincing.

Other orchestral songs are offered as filler and show off Strauss and Te Kanawa very well. Five Stars.