HThe year before Theodor Adorno wrote his seminal statement in 1949 that writing another poem after Auschwitz would be a barbaric act, one that would shape aesthetic discourse for decades, Richard Strauss composed The Four Last Songs. With its brilliant colors and its path (or escape) to fantastical beauty, it seemed to have fallen out of time – like a “Requiem for themselves” (Karl Schumann). It was not intended to be a course. They owe their title to their publishing strategy. The fact that Strauss wrote his last song – “Malvin” – later, at the end of 1948, became known only in 1984.
It was found in the safe of soprano Maria Giritza with the dedication: “To my beloved Maria, this last rose. . . “The most beautiful woman in the world.” She was one of the singers who inspired the composer's love of the soprano voice – like his wife Pauline d'Ahna, to whom he gave four songs as a wedding gift in 1894. The last four, based on poems by Joseph von Eichendorff and Hermann Hesse, were written between May and September 1948, he wrote A Changing Memory of the Shared Journey Through Life.
Since their premiere at London's Royal Albert Hall on 22 May 1950 with Strauss's chosen Norwegian soprano Kirsten Flagstad, accompanied by the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Wilhelm Furtwängler, they have been one of the great challenges of all dramatic lyric sopranos. The discography includes more than 80 recordings – now also one recording with Asmik Grigorian. After her breakthrough film Salzburg Salome (2018), this wonderful singing actress is increasingly subject to the intrusion of praise. The dangers of fame lie in its own dynamics, including a shift into complacency. Is she the same one who came up with the precious title “Laws of Isolation” for her Strauss CD – and the equation 4 + 4 = ∞? What infinity is meant by this symbol – the symbol of “solitude” (loneliness)?
In the brief introduction, she justifies the fact that, in addition to the orchestral version, she also recorded the piano version by Max Wolf and John Gribbon while emphasizing that these versions “each require different tones.” But even Markus Hinterhauser, whom she praised as “magical in everything he does,” is unable to convey the magic of timbre and instrumental effects of the orchestral piano version: the transparency of the sound glowing in pastel tones; Contradictions. Repeated illustrations, for example when the psalms “sing” the twittering of larks. The attempt feels like an analytical commentary or like a rehearsal for a performance, especially through hyper-extension of temperature. In the piano version, “September” is about two minutes longer than the orchestral version.
Magic again: does not want to happen because, on the one hand, the color spectrum of sound is too narrow to allow the reds and golds of Indian summer to shine, and on the other hand, because the ability to expand the sound is missing. The range of the songs is approximately two octaves: from low C to high B. One problem is that the low register – for example in “September” or “Im Abendrot” – should not be sung in the chest voice, but in a high position voice but with a voice that rests the word. In this recording, in the lower third of the first octave – for example in phrases like “In twilight graves” or “The rain sings softly in the flowers” – the words drift away in a breath.
Image: Alpha Classics (external)
The greatest sources of danger are the many melismas, which give lines of the same length turning into phrases of different lengths—infinite phrases that sound as if they were written for a violinist with a bow a mile long. In practice, the difficulties proved mostly insoluble: for example in the eight-bar phrase “Your blessed presence” (“In the spring”) or in “A thousand-fold deep” (“At sleep”). It was composed by Asmik Grigorian with a remarkable certainty, sometimes forcefully, but a tight, cold sound that cuts through the orchestral fabric. And only if you read the texts, you can hear that there are words framed by consonants.
Was the music of the Radio France Orchestra uncharted territory? The fact that she plays with professional quality is a lot, but it is not enough. And it gets mixed up when the singer praises her leader Mikko Frank for “making everything simple, like the things that are really important on this earth.”
In these four symphonic poems, the vocal panorama of a large orchestra must be played with the precision of chamber music. This implies, as just one example, that the voice is having an intimate and precise dialogue with the trumpet – even if the trumpeter eventually addresses the idea that the voice sang in the first song (and how) – as can be heard, for example on the first recording Schwarzkopf with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Dennis Brain.
If the musical score is something “like a check which every singer must cash in his own way” (Paul Valéry), then it can be done with Elizabeth Schwarzkopf's exquisite and precious craftsmanship; With the elegance of the grande dame Lisa della Casa; With the silky sheen of Kiri Te Kanawa or the radiant splendor of Jessie Norman, who together with Kurt Masur performs the songs in a cinematic format, so to speak. If the question were asked of recording all the pictures: it would be of Gondola Janowitz under Herbert von Karajan, an art exhibition celebrated with unobtrusive devotion.
Richard Strauss: Four Last Songs. Asmaik Gregorian, Radio France Orchestra, Mikko Frank. Alpha Classics Alpha 1042 (Naxos)
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