Customer Reviews

Strauss: Also Sprach Zarathustra / Don Juan / Four Last Songs ~ Tennstedt / Popp

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She is my only reason to buy this disk, although the other recordings (the Also Sprach Zarathustra and Don Juan) are quite nicely done. Lucia did two recordings that I know of of the Four Last Songs. One with Tennstedt, and one with Michael Tilson Thomas. This one is with Tennstedt and is by far the best version she did, not to mention ever done on recordings. Period. Here she was fresh voiced, so artistic, so insightful, and so masterful with how to take advantage of Richard Strauss' beautiful score. No other singer comes close... not Schwarzkopf, not Janowitz, and yes, not even Fleming. Tennstedt conducts everything beautifully and pays close attention to every detail. I guarantee it is the most magical Four Last Songs you have ever heard!!! I'd recommend the original release, the one with "Death and Configuration," but unfortunately it is hard to find that CD. I have it though!

All in all, this is singing on its highest level, as though from heaven... Not enough superlatives can be used. Many critics, colleagues, and teachers with whom I have spoken and given this CD to listen to, say they haven't heard better. I trust their opinion and at this bargain-basement price, you can easily take a gamble and trust my advice. Buy it! You won't be disappointed.

Tennstedt had a fairly brief heyday, in which he was celebrated mostly for his Mahler recordings. He was a very fine Straussian too, and rather quietly accumulated several fine Strauss performances when he had the LPO at their best. This Zarathustra stands among the best, with Tennstedt emphasizing the lyric beauty and long line of Strauss, all to the work's benefit.

Don Juan has received many good recordings and this is one of them. I stayed engaged through this whole performance, though, as a passionate Strauss lover, I am ashamed to admit I sometimes wander during Don Juan because I've heard it so many times.

Ahh, but the clencher: I had the privilege of hearing Lucia Popp sing the 4 Last Songs in Los Angeles, Giulini conducting, shortly after she made this recording. I agree with Andre - this is the recording I'd take to the desert island. She and Tennstedt are as one, and her total involvement in the meaning of the music, her infinite range of nuance, and the plaintive beauty of her voice combine in a 4 Last Songs for the ages. As cliched as it is, if ever there was art that conceals art, Popp had it. Every time I hear this performance I feel that she and Tennstedt are sharing their deepest experiences and their love of Strauss with me.

By the way, I have the original CD issue too, and the remastering on this disc has solved some of the problems with the early digital sound.

All this for $6.99.

This is one of those gems that should not be missed. This is a recording that has been lurking in EMI's budget catalog for years, and now reappears in an even cheaper re-release. This cd would be worth it alone for the Also Sprach Zarathustra, but the addition of the Don Juan, and the Vier Letzte Lieder make this a cd that should grace everyone's collection.

The Zarathustra is powerful indeed, Tennstedt's rendering of a fascinating score highlighted by terse and powerful efforts from all sections of this amazing orchestra. I had been "hooked" on Karajan's early 80's rendering for years, but this cd has won me over completely.

The Vier Letzte Lieder cap this cd perfectly with an outstanding performance by Lucia Popp. What I originally thought would be a voice too light for this, I looked back at similar "light" voices who have done very well with this (e.g. Gundula Janowitz). Tennstedt masters the orchestra perfectly to complement Popp, who takes Hesse's and von Eichendorff's poetry to their musical heights. A penetrating, powerful, and beautiful recording...and [at this price], how can you resist?

All praise to Tennstedt, his orchestra, Lucia Popp, EMI, and to Strauss himself.

This is definitely one of the must-by recordings of 4 Last Songs alonside the famous Karaja/Janowitz and Szell/Schwarzkopf versions. Tennstedt gives much slower and more expanssive reading of each song, capturing the transcendental serenity of the music masterfully. With Lucia Popp's ethereal voice and sublime singing, this performance verges on the miraculous! The rapt atmosphere of London PO's rich sound is beautifully recorded digitally.

I strongly support the high praise for Lucia Popp's performance of the Strauss songs. I do have this recording in its initial release, but not with these other pieces. When she sang this work here in Los Angeles, I first heard her from a distant seat in the auditorium, and knew I needed to hear the performance again. I returned for a subsequent performance, seated much closer to the stage, and had an unforgettable experience. She did not have a massive voice, but was an incredible communicator.
I think I have discovered that another performance of hers of this work, with Georg Solti and the Chicago Symphony, may be available on DVD, from a UNITEL production of 1977, which I have been hoping to find for years. The 4-DVD set, "Georg Solti, The Maestro", is ordered and on its way. I have not heard it yet to comment on its comparative virtues.

Also Sprach became famous because of its use in the movie "2001".
Since that famous movie came out, it has been recorded more times than the music really deserves. It is a masterpiece but I would rank it behind most of the other Strauss tone poems. It is just a tad on the shallow side. But this recording by the great conductor Klaus Tennstedt, gives the music much more depth than it usually gets. He really takes the music seriously and I really enjoyed this performance. Don Juan also gets an outstanding performance. And what more can you say about Lucia Popp? She was simply a magnificent singer and a real artist. Her performance of the Four Last Songs is just breathtaking. If you reprogram this CD to play Don Juan first and Also Sprach last, you have a real concert program, soloist and all. At the budget price, this CD is a steal. A must for every classical music lover.

Klaus Tennstedt was a mercurial musician who could surprise you with one-of-a-kind performances where every bar seemed to spring spontaneously from his imagination--he had that in common with Mitropoulos before him. This Zarathustra is one of his most delightful, puckish interpretations, all the more wonderful because the work is such a bloated relic in the concert hall. Vulgarized by the movie 2001 and pumped up to titanic size by Karajan, Zarathustra needed someone to restore its Nietzschean character. That was Strauss's point, after all. Tennstedt's completley unpredictable reading does full justrice to the most unpredictable of philosophers.

The recording is full and brilliant without being bombastic (the famous opening moments are sonically dull, though), and the London Phil. plays with a rare abandon, totally in accord with their conductor. The fillers are generous, a Don Juan released at the same time as the Zarathustra in 1990, and a Four Last Songs made some years earlier. As you'd expect, the Don Juan is leaner and more etched than Karajan's several versions. Tennstedt doesn't try to make the work an orchestral showpiece, and despite its over-familiarity, he finds freshness from bar to bar. Like the Zarathustra, the performance has a great deal of inner life and stands high among all current versions.

Other reviewers here rhapsodize over Lucia Popp's Four Last Songs, which were overshadowed at their release by the opulent version from Jessye Norman. Popp's voice had darkened enough to sound credible in this music (she was basically a light coloratura), but there is a fast beat in her voice, and she fails to articulate the poetry at all, being more intent, like Janowitz, in making beautiful sounds even when the listener cannot pick up a single word of text. If you don't mind the loss (I certainly do) Popp's reading is ravishing, and Tennstedt offers superb accompaniment. I will listen to this performance again for his contribution more than hers.

This is it, guys!! THE recording of Strauss' Fopur Last Songs. Accept no substitute! And just in time for Valentine's Day. A fight with your girl friend, your wife or your fiancee? Strauss has just the ticket. There are NO more beautiful Orchestral songs in all the literature than these works, finished in 1948. 1948!!!! A mere 3 years after the holocost of World War 2, massive suffering and destruction, and the growing menace of a Cold War and a very real fear of mushroom clouds. How could Strauss find this peace and beauty in such a world? Well, he did, in the poetry of Hesse and Eichendorff. As to why composers don't write this kind of music any more, some say, "everything that should have been written, HAS been already done." I disagree.

When we listen to music, we can do it at least two different ways. One, we can be very attentive. Searching like an abdominal surgeon for tiny lesions in the gut, analyzing every note and phrase for meaning. There is great enjoyment in this, as we often discover marvelous insights. We can also sit back and permit the sound to wash over us like a gentle swell and let our mind and heart go where it wants to. Very good music lets us do both, but, not at the same time. One caveat---don't try this while operating heavy machinery or driving.

"Fruhling" is my least favoite of the poems, but Popp sings it here with marvelous intonation and lilting grace. It runs 3:52, not a hurried pace at all. "September" is a narative about a garden and was actually the final song of the four composed, in September of 1948. The autumnal flavor of this group is warmly present with the brilliant decelerando in the writing and the even more phenominal skill of Tennstedt bringing Popp and orchstra down in tempo and volume at "langsam tut er die mudgeword'nen Augen zu," slowly, he closes his weary eyes. This passage will literaly take your breath away. It is one thing to play or sing well at moderate to high volume. Audiences leap to their feet at the high c's of pavarotti or Obama (i.e. pure rhetoric, NO substance), but it is quite a different thing to be pitch and tone perfect at levels almost unbelievably quiet. The softness of a really great artist can be intoxicating. Popp and the London Philharmonic are a perfect example of this once in a life-time treat. "Beim Schlafengehen" is the most beautiful of the Four Last Songs, and I would argue, the most poinient. It is awash in tranquility and peace and is deeply personal to everyone that hears it. Hesse's poem is three stanzas long and, after the first part, we are seduced by a long weaving and thoroughly unforgetable violin solo by whom I wish I knew on this recording. Ever so tenderly, the soprano returns and at key points in the text, both she and the orchestra place an exclamation point with what I always thought was the tap of a medium range tubular bell. The orchestral scoring however, as revealed by Wikipedia, does not mention any such percussion piece and I don't recall hearing this wonderful moment as prominantly on other recordings. Tennstedt, however, much to his credit, emphasizes it just right. It has an almost angelic like quality to it and if I were hearing this live in concert, I'd have to refrain myself from verbally commenting, lest I disturb my neighboors. So, I supose this "ping" that I hear is from the winds and a celeste. What a grand stroke.

Eichendorff's "Im Abendrot" is the last of the Four Last Songs and is the most popular because of it's gentle transition from sunset to death. This is the death we probably all are wishing for. Ciome to think of it, this is the end of TWO lives, "how weary WE are of wandering....is this perhaps death?" Lovers? Spouses? You decide. I wonder what Strauss meant.

Buy this cd, in any of the several combinations, with Wagner or more Strauss. Just make sure it's Popp and Tennstedt. The fillers aren't that important. Here is one of vocal/orchstral music's grandest 20-25 minutes, you won't regret it. Schwarzkopf/Szell and Janowitz/Karajan ( as per David Hurwitz) are probably the front-runners, but for my money and to my ears, Popp/Tennstedt still lead the pack. Still there are very nice packages from Norman/masur, Fleming/Eschenbach and, for the husky lovers in the crowd, Leontyne Price and Erich Leinsdorf. I have heard a far too abrupt Wolfgang Sawallisch reading with a young and very honey-voiced Barbara Hendricks. Too bad she didn't have a chance to stand to Tennstedt's left.

After this cd arrives in your mailbaox, don't forget the flowers. But, come to think of it, you may not even need the wine or candy. Good Luck.