When Renée Fleming first recorded Richard Strauss’s Four Last Songs in 1995, she had never sung them in public. Thirteen years later, the glittering American soprano has countless public performances under her belt. Time enough for a second bite at this most luscious cherry — surely music’s most moving songs of farewell from a composer to his art, his public and life itself.
Made at live concerts in Strauss’s home town, Munich, this version stands out from all others. Christian Thielemann, conducting the Munich Philharmonic, has Strauss’s music in his blood, and his shaping of phrases and balancing of textures is gorgeously subtle. In a work in which Strauss keeps his orchestra singing almost as much as the soprano, it’s a delight to welcome a recording where tone and dynamics are so sympathetically balanced.
Personal preferences will dictate how you find Fleming’s interpretation. For those brought up on the patrician perfection of Elisabeth Schwarzkopf’s vintage recordings, or who recently fell for Soile Isokoski’s Scandinavian radiance, Fleming’s more openly expressive approach might sound a tad common. Some of her detailing is excessive. But I fell for her vibrant responses to each turn of music and text, projected in wonderful long breaths by a voice distinctive, warm and secure in every register.
What to fill the space with? Most distinguished Strauss recitals have partnered the Four Last Songs either with further orchestral songs or suitable scenes from his operas. Fleming has gone for both. Ariadne’s two monologues from Ariadne auf Naxos give her voice a particularly good workout; we also get Zweite Brautnacht from Die ägyptische Helena. The orchestral songs are old favourites, Zueignung and company.
Occasionally in these ancillaries the volume of Thielmann’s orchestra gets out of hand. But you’re still left with Fleming’s big attraction: that full-cream voice, on top form, at home with the composer she loves most of all.
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