Strauss: Four Last Songs; 6 Orchestral Songs

Lovers of the Four Last Songs have come to take good recordings of the set for granted. Jessye Norman's early digital account with Kurt Masur and the Leipzigers is one of the best--powerful, sensuous, and very well recorded. Strauss may have conceived the songs with an ideal voice in mind, but he made a point of asking that Kirsten Flagstad give the first performance of the set. Since then, no comparably endowed soprano, in possession of both the tonal richness and the extraordinary amplitude that were Flagstad's, has recorded the Four Last Songs, save for Norman. The tessitura of the cycle is perfect for her--not too high, with almost every phrase lying in the warm, lustrous middle part of the voice--and Norman shapes the words with consummate skill and sensitivity. To hear her soar out over the orchestra, carrying the most demanding phrases with long-breathed splendor, is to enjoy, for a moment, the return of a golden age. --Ted Libbey