Customer Reviews

Strauss: Four Last Songs; Wagner" Excerpts from Tristan und Isolde & Götterdämmerung

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I must correct a few things here:

1)These songs were dedicated by Richard Strauss to Mme Flagstad. That surely means that he had her or at least a heavy soprano voice in mind.

2) The sound in "Four Last Songs" on Testament is better than in earlier pirated LP editions. There you could barely hear the singer's voice at all.

3) The record company Audite has just released a live recording of these songs with Flagstad in very good sound. The recording is taken from a concert i Berlin, 1952. We only get three of the four songs because the top notes in "Im Frühling¨" no longer was within Mme Flagstad's voice. But the other three are sung in a very heartfelt manner.

4) Birgit Nilsson sang these songs and have also recorded them for Bluebell Records - one of the best versions I have heard, she seems deeply involved.

5) For me the best version ever comes from Elisabeth Söderström/Richard Armstrong on EMI, nla - please EMI, a CD reissue!

(The only CD incarnation - and for a short time only - was to be seen on EMI France, 1998).

I wonder if the reviewers above have ever considered that Richard Strauss may have in fact wanted this kind of heavier voice rather than the lighter ones commonly used today. Sure the recordings sound wonderful and the Schwarzkopf recording is lovely to listen to BUT I wonder whether how well her voice would have managed over the heavy orchestration.

There is a live Salzburg 1964 recording with Schwarzkopf and Karajan and the voice sounds a bit thin. There are some recordings of Flagstad in Berlin which are much much better and after a number of listening one begins to reject the lighter voices.

Some years ago I heard an American Soprano singing the Last 4 Songs in Melbourne and she couldn't be heard fifteen rows back in the stalls - obviously the orchestration requires a heavier voice and not just being able to sing the "notes". Lisa della Casa, Janowitz and perhaps at a pinch Norman are other versions are worth listening to. Not just the recording quality but the interpretation!!!! Thats what Strauss wanted.

I have 10 recordings of the wonderful four last songs that Richard Strauss and I must say that I rate this record at the very top along with Renee Fleming's 1994 recording. Jessye Norman's wonderfully exciting recording is also at the top.

I come to this recording again and again when I want to hear the songs mainly because of Flagstad's beautiful singing. I also have her Berlin performance from 1952 where so omitted "Beim Schlafengehen" and she sang a cut "Im Abendroth" (where, strangely, the title was among the sections that was cut). Her wonderfully beautiful tone is very evident throughout all the songs. She is able to soar above the orchestra as few lyric sopranos can when performing it live. I also have the stereo recording by Schwarzkopf, but her mannerisms ruins the whole experience. I get no emotion from her at all. When hearing Flagstad in this recording you can hear every emotion in every note.

I am a Flagstad nut so my review may be biased but I cannot help myself but to think this way when hearing the greatest voice of the 20th century.

The sound here is pretty bad, and while everyone knows that Flagstad had a magnificent vocal endowment, the sound on this aircheck does her no favors. Besides, I think that her huge voice was probably unsuited to these songs anyway. The voice is heavy..very heavy, and she also omits, or rather, dodges a high B flat in the first song, possibly because of her growing fear of climatic top notes, and possibly because Strauss allows the soprano the option of taking the top note or omitting it. All subsequent sopranos have chosen to take the note. Flagstad does not, which makes the line seem somewhat deficient. Perhaps a complete performance of these four songs by Flagstad on a studio recording would be highly desirable, but maybe not. The sheer massive sound of her voice would be overkill. Flagstad's great successor, and probable equal - Birgit Nilsson, never sang these songs. She was a smart lady. Her voice would have proven no more suitable than Flagstad's. What is called for in these songs is a lyric or lyric spinto who can "float" a musical line. For me, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf was ideal in this music. But this live performance was the world premiere of the songs, and Flagstad was the most famous soprano in the world at that time. The sound is not at all even satisfactory - tons of surface noise, limited dynamics, etc. The only reason I can find to own this disc is to either be a real "collector" or a

Flagstad fanatic. I am somewhat a combination of both, but I still do not find this to be a satisfactory listening experience.

Most listeners will immediately run away after hearing the brief samples offered at Amazon -- this legendary premiere of Strauss's Four Last Songs from a concert at Royal Albert Hall in 1950 sounds dismally dim and scratchy. It barely reaches acceptability even for historical buffs. By modern standards Flagstad sounds too heavy, also, her dramatic soprano pulling the music earthward when it wants to soar. Intonation occasionally suffers, whether due to the singer or the aircheck shellacs, I can't tell.

Furtwangler's tempos are consistently measured, which fights against any possibility that Strauss's melodic lines will lift off. These are two great artists, of course, so the historical value of this Tewstament reissue -- filled out with authoritative Wagner excerpts from the same concert -- is consierable. That said, the crudeness of the sound robbed it of pleasure for me. If you've heard earlier versions on pirate labels and hoped that this remastering would be a revelation, it isn't.

Since it was the first public presentation of the "Four Last Songs", R. Strauss was already gone, It i Historical CD

that I think it is "must have". Although for being an old recording the sound is not the best, Actually is a Collectors CD.