“For me, Strauss is one of the greatest composers,” Diana Damrau has said. “The way he handles the soprano voice is a joy. And to be able to sing his music with my voice feels like coming home.” The centrepiece of this album of Strauss songs is the sublime Vier letzte Lieder, in which Damrau – born and trained in Bavaria – joins forces with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and its long-standing Chief Conductor Mariss Jansons, in what was to become his final recording. Her partner in a tempting and diverse selection of songs with piano is Helmut Deutsch. “Not only is Strauss’s music gorgeous,” says Damrau, “there’s the way he combines words and notes – and the psychology.”
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REVIEWS:
Damrau’s strength in Strauss is an intrinsic capacity in his darker music to delve rather deeply beyond the text and give us something special. This is the case in lieder like the ‘Ophelia’ songs (included on this disc) - and it’s also evident in ‘Beim Schlafengehen’. The voice is neither as sumptuous nor as creamy as some - unlike the orchestra here which is simply ravishing - but she gives such meaning to Hesse’s words that death becomes enigmatic.
This disc is also very much a supreme reminder of how great a conductor Jansons was of Richard Strauss. The CD closes with ‘Morgen’, but in Strauss’s orchestrated version with Jansons and his Bavarian players supplying amply lush support, Damrau provides that sense of infinite timelessness a great interpreter of this song always brings to it.
Where Damrau really does excel on this disc is in the lieder, where she is partnered by the pianist Helmut Deutsch. This partnership is so symbiotic in Strauss - if it isn’t always in some other composers they perform together - that the results are often profoundly moving.
