This is Renée Fleming's second recording of the Four Last Songs, and by and large it's preferable to her earlier version, made for RCA in 1995 with Christoph Eschenbach and the Houston Symphony. Here she has a better orchestra in the Munich Philharmonic, and a more forceful Strauss conductor in Christian Thielemann, who gives her voice space to soar and swoop in its illimitable fashion, but refuses to indulge her much-discussed habit of dropping consonants half the time. Some might prefer the hieratic solemnity of her earlier performance, though, since this is a strikingly fretful interpretation that contemplates mortality with profound unease as well as resignation. Elsewhere, she gives a ravishing account of Verführung and the finest performance of Winterweihe I can think of. The operatic excerpts aren't so successful: the Ariadne extracts need additional singers, and if you know Leontyne Price's epoch-making recording of Die Agyptische Helena's big monologue, then you're going to find Fleming underpowered in comparison.
CD: Strauss: Four Last Songs: Ariadne auf Naxos:
Tim Ashley
(Decca)
Contributor
Tim Ashley
Tim Ashley is a Guardian classical and opera critic, though he's also keen on literature and philosophy so you might sometimes find him cross-referencing all three. His work has also appeared in Literary Review and Opera magazine and he is author of a biography of Richard Strauss
Tim Ashley
The GuardianTramp
