Customer Reviews

Strauss: Four Last Songs

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Many people will be surprised by the negativity of the comments by bert1761, the first and previous reviewer of this disc. First, let me say that I deplore the practice of some Amazon readers who give another reviewer a negative vote simply because they do not agree with the opinion expressed. I think "bert" writes honestly, more in sorrow than in anger, and that his is a thoughtful, intelligent, sincerely held opinion that deserves careful consideration. I know what he means by the overt expressiveness of Fleming's interpretation but I do not agree that it is obtrusive or excessive. The voice is in wonderful condition and she is able to sustain the line with apparently effortless ease - except when she clearly chooses to disrupt it deliberately for emotive effect. The lower register is rich and characterful - you can hear its development just from the resonance of Renee's speaking voice in the publicity interviews on this website - and the top soars as creamily and amply as ever; I hear no strain anywhere. Her German is of course impeccable and her breath control a thing of wonder. I, too, am a great fan of Janowitz's and Te Kanawa's (earlier version with Davis) more restrained, classical interpretations, but Fleming's "Im Abendrot", for example, still works its magic for me. She is perhaps delivering here on record more of what you might hear in a live performance (indeed, I believe these are live takes - although you'd never know), when your communicative gestures can be more emphatic than in a recording - but slightly idiosyncratic instances of vocal colouring and verbal inflection can, on repeated listenings, become a little quirky and irritating. Nonetheless, this is an immediate, heartfelt interpretation of these inexhaustibly moving songs and very much a performance for the modern listener who needs and expects more individuality to distinguish one version from another. Furthermore, the recorded sound is technically marvellous; I have never heard so much detail in the orchestration of these songs.

The subsequent Strauss arias and songs are a glorious addition to her discography; Fleming was born to sing this composer - and just as she would opt to sing Strauss over any other composer for the voice, I would choose Fleming to interpret him. I cannot hear any inadequacy in her lower register in the first extended "Ariadne" excerpt and I rank this disc with her earlier selection of Strauss "bon-bons" with Susan Graham and Barbara Bonney. The bonus arias on the second disc in the Deluxe Edition are testament to her versatility and supremacy in other composers, especially Tchaikovsky's Tatyana.

So I respectfully beg to differ from the previous reviewer's judgement - but would fiercely defend and welcome his right to express it, prompting, as it does, civilised debate.

This set of glorious performances by Renee Fleming, both the older ones included on the bonus disk and the new ones, especially the new versions of Strauss's Vier Letzte Lieder, seem to me so fine as to be nearly beyond praise. Listening to them, especially after reading some of the more critical comments here, has taken me back some 50 years to when I was a young lad in LA diving into the world of great singing, all on LPs then. There was much discussion in those days about Renata Tebaldi and Maria Callas -- in fact, there was a debate, and sometimes a bitter one, about whether Tebaldi was better than Callas, or Callas better than Tebaldi. (A similar debate was going on over the different sorts of violin playing offered by Francescatti and Heifetz.) This debate struck me then, and strikes me still, as an utterly absurd and foolish argument. It is not a question of "better". It was, it is, a matter of what seem to me two diverse modes of beauty, both supremely fine. Tebaldi's singing was lusher, more lyrical; Callas's was more dramatic, more intense. And they were both singing gloriously. You had both of them available to you. You didn't have to choose between, so why would you? You just had to learn to be open to the beauty in both. And if you arrived at cherishing both, wouldn't you just have loved to hear a singer who could somehow combine features of both modes?

That is just what Renee Fleming has so generously offered us in recent years. She began more in the Tebaldi mode, as Szolti recognized, and in that mode issued her early performance of the Strauss songs as well as a number of other disks. Then over the last decade or so she has gradually instilled a greater dramatic intensity into her singing. And she has done so without losing or marring any of the beauty of her voice. It is still as lush and rich, as lyrical, still as astounding in range and timbre and control as it ever was, but now in miraculous combination has also a new and powerful dramatic intensity. When I listened to this latest performance of the Letzte Lieder, I felt that no performance of them that I had ever heard before was more beautiful, more intense, more moving. This performance by Fleming seems to me to reside -- with some others I also wouldn't want to lose -- quite at the top. There's no "better" among the best.

A few times I sensed a resemblance to, or slight echo of Schwarzkopf; once or twice I found myself remembering Janet Baker's renderings of Mahler or Schubert songs, for their dramatic intensity. But these were just awestruck sideglances into quite different musical worlds. Fleming is always herself, always recognizable and memorable, and incomparably fine. And now she has by some miracle become even finer than before. I still listen to her earlier versions of these songs and treasure them. But now my world seems richer and finer because I also have these incomparable new performances. The kind of intensity she now brings to them makes them something beyond beautiful, makes them so powerful and moving that I have to guard against the impulse to play them over and over without stop. She creates so compelling a world of experience that I don't want to leave it -- would like to dwell there perpetually. The sensible person in me says "don't wear them out". Hard to resist, though.

I'd like to end by expressing my gratitude to Renee Fleming. It seems to me to have taken considerable courage to alter an already highly successful mode of performance. There were risks. And something mysterious was involved as well, something more than the intelligence and diligence with which she is clearly amply gifted. Some other gift. I won't try to name it. But she has now passed its gleanings to us, and I for one am deeply grateful. Thank you, Renee. All honor to you.

This very generous two disc release has so many positive aspects that it hopefully will manage to garner the attention of music lovers around the world despite the negative comments being published in some quarters. Fame of an artist is accompanied by that very public eye and ear that references previous performances and recordings of repeated works as being superior to a new issue, and while that may gather the ire of some, it is simply part of the joy of encountering new performances: some boo, some shout Brava! Renée Fleming is a bona fide star of the opera and concert stage, a physically beautiful woman with a soaring, rich, intelligent voice who manages to inhabit a number of roles that she makes her own - be those her signature Strauss roles or her favorite 'Rusalka' and 'Thaïs'.

For the opening songs on this 2008 live recording from Munich in collaboration with the superb Strauss conductor Christian Thielemann at the helm of the Munich Philharmonic Fleming offers the Strauss 'Four Last Songs'. Yes, they are different from her 1995 recording but thirteen years have passed and for this listener the depth of character in the poetry of these gorgeous songs is finer and the voice remains one of the few truly Straussian soprano voices before the public today. Plus, after the 'Four Last Songs' we are gifted with three excerpts form 'Ariadne auf Naxos' and these are impeccably performed as are the four songs that follow and the 'Zweite Brautnacht!' from Strauss' 'Die Ägyptische Helena' that conclude the 'concert'. Fleming and Thielemann are as superb a team for Strauss as one could imagine.

The second CD on the package is called 'Signature Roles at the Met Opera' and these include Tchaikovsky's 'Letter Scene' form 'Eugen Onegin, Dvorak's 'O Silver moon' aria from 'Rusalka', and Verdi's 'Willow song/Ave Maria' from 'Otello' - with Fleming accompanied by Sir Georg Solti and the London Symphony Orchestra; 'Ah! Je suis seule...' from Massenet's 'Thaïs' with Yves Abel conducting the Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitane; and the 'Mondscheinmusik' from Strauss' 'Capriccio' joined by Walter Berry and with Christoph Eschenbach and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. This is Fleming's realm and to have each of these special interpretations on one recording is a gift. Renée Fleming is an extraordinary artist, a true diva, and this collection is a rich one. 'Habe dank!' Highly recommended. Grady Harp, September 08

It says something sad about the current state of opera recordings that Renee Fleming hasn't been given a complete Strauss role on disc besides Daphne, not the Marschallin or Ariadne. As evidenced here, she is uniquely gifted to assume those roles, as well as to sing Strauss's orchestral songs. Compared to her 1995 version with Eschenbach (BMG), the new one marks a quantum leap in artistry. Fleming won a Fulbright fellowship to study in Germany as a young singer, and her ability to find meaning in Hesse's poetry in the Four Last Songsis impresive. I think only Schwarzkopf surpasses her in that regard. And Fleming can spin out a long pianissimo better than anyone since Caballe in her prime.

Thielemann is also a finer conductor than Eschenbach. He and his soloist have crafted a thoughtful, highly nuanced interpreatation, generally moving at a slow pace, that touches the heart of the music(I couldn't say that about her earlier account, where rapturous vocalism was the whole show). What other reviewers call overacting is expressivity -- Fleming obviously feels this music deeply and has reached that time in an artist's career when she can fully communicate anything she wants to. Her Ariadne excerpts are poignant and rival even Schwarzkopf in beauty.

My only criticism is that she starts a fraction off pitch and strains at the beginning of the Four Last Songs, no doubt because of the live concert setting. But soon everything is vocally in place. Contrary to what one sour reivewr claims, there's little decline in Fleming's voice since 13 years ago. Time has been kind, and Fleming has repaid that kindness by growing steadily in artistry.

As one can see from my other reviews, I have long been enraptured by the voice and talent of Renee Fleming. But what I have found spellbinding in the past is nowhere to be encountered on this CD. Gone are the creamy vocals, superior musicianship and tremendous intelligence. In their place appears to be tremendous indulgence.

This recording of the "Four Last Songs" could not be any more different from Ms. Fleming's 1995 recording. In that recording, her beautiful legato singing and sensitive phrasing produced a stunning and intimate performance to stand alongside the greats -- even though Ms. Fleming had never performed them live at the time and was only in her mid-30s. In the current recording, her phrasing and singing is very choppy -- as though she needs to find a different color for every word. While she is arguably interpreting the poems set to music, Strauss could never have intended one to do so at the expense of the gorgeous lines of his music. Moreover, this performance feels as though Ms. Fleming is "overacting" her part as interpreter, much in the same way she marred her up-to-that-point-excellent performance in Gergiev's Verdi Requiem by treating the Libera Me in many respects as though it were an operatic mad scene.

Things improve somewhat after the Four Last Songs, but not by much. The second excerpt from "Ariadne auf Naxos" is excellent, but the first lies too low for her voice and causes her to make some uncomfortable noises from her lower register and, while much of her performance of "Es gibt ein Reich" is beautiful, she sounds strained at the end and detracts from much of what came before. The orchestral songs that follow may be the best thing on the disc, but it may be because one's associations with those pieces are nowhere near as strong as with the "Four Last Songs" and "Ariadne" excerpts, so that Ms. Fleming does not come across as mannered and indulgent.

The problems with this recording are highlighted even more by the inclusion of the bonus material on the Deluxe Edition. But if one is a newcomer to Ms. Fleming's work and is not deterred from purchasing this recording because of the Four Last Songs, the Deluxe Edition is well worth the expenditure. (My rating for the "Standard Edition" of this CD is only 2 stars.) Excerpts from some of her earlier recordings show her at the height of her powers, deploying her magnificent voice beautifully and appropriately dramatically. Her performance of Tatyana's letter scene from "Eugene Onegin" is may particular favorite. And having heard her perform it at the Met two years ago, I know that she is still capable of such magnificent work. (And you can see for yourself on the DVD of that performance. Tchaikovsky - Eugene Onegin / Fleming, Vargas, Hvorostovsky, Gergiev, Carsen [Metropolitan Opera 2007])

Alternatively, someone interested in hearing the best of Renee Fleming can purchase any or all of the following: Renée Fleming - Signatures ~ Great Opera Scenes / Sir Georg Solti; Renée Fleming - Strauss Heroines / Bonney, Graham, Eschenbach; Renee Fleming - The Beautiful Voice ~ Gounod, Lehar, Orff, Puccini, Rachmaninov, Strauss; Renée Fleming - I Want Magic! ~ American Opera Arias; and Strauss: Four Last Songs; Songs with Orchestra; Rosenkavalier Suite.

Oh for the good old days...

Renee Fleming is a gift, and this is a beautiful compilation of some of her best work, both scenes from operas and Richard Strauss song cycles. Strauss is her favorite composer, and it's not difficult to hear why this should be so; they seem made for each other. I strongly recommend the deluxe edition, as the second disk has the arias on it.

Renee Fleming is without doubt one of the best Divas we have seen (or heard) on stage at the Met. She does not only possess an amazing voice but she is also beautiful to look at. Both discs included in this package are well worth the price I paid on Amazon, which was much less than I could have bought them at the music store where they happened to be sold out.
The Four last Songs are beautiful and sad, exquisitely performed. The selection from the Met is more familiar, but I know I will listen again and again.

These are beautifully recorded performances of Richard Strauss's four last songs and a range of operatic areas which Fleming has made her trademark specials. Her voice and her wonderful phrasing and dramatic delivery are uniquely suited to these pieces and no-one else does them as well as she does in the present era.

Renée Fleming simplemente posee una voz maravillosa, muy buena tecnica vocal & una belleza unica. Desde el primer momento que escuchas este maravilloso trabajo quedas encantado por la bella voz de esta Soprano Lirica, si eres fan de Renée es necesario que tengas este maravilloso album en tu colección, además incluye arias de sus mas celebres papeles dentro Ópera.

This is a must have for Renee fans. It is different from the original 10 years ago, but this CD was recorded live. She stands alone in the world with the most glorious and intoxicating voice. I have seen her live 3 times and she was totally AMAZING. I have been waiting for a live recording of the Four Last Songs since I saw her on PBS a few years back and this CD is well worth the wait.