Richard Strauss's Four Last Songs with Flagstad and Söderström

Wilhelm Furtwängler and Kirsten Flagstad

This post was occasioned by nothing so much as my wanting to listen to Richard Strauss's set of Four Last Songs. In the event, I ended up transferring two performances: the premiere of 1950 with Kirsten Flagstad, Wilhelm Furtwängler and the Philharmonia Orchestra, and a 1982 recording from Elisabeth Söderström and the Orchestra of the Welsh National Opera, with Richard Armstrong conducting.

Strauss composed the group of songs in 1948, when he was 84, asking that Flagstad premiere them. He was to die the following year. This recording is a transcription of the first performance from the Royal Albert Hall in May 1950. It originates from a somewhat noisy set of acetates that cannot obscure the remarkable performance from Flagstad, the greatest Wagnerian soprano of her time; Furtwängler, whom many consider to be the finest conductor of the 20th century; and the Philharmonia, one of the premiere ensembles of the postwar era. Flagstad's voice is astonishing in its effortless power.

For contrast, I chose the superb singing actor Elisabeth Söderström in an all-Strauss program that as far as I know has not been reissued. Her version of the Four Last Songs is complemented by scenes from two Strauss operas - the Marschallin's monologue from Der Rosenkavalier and the closing scene from Capriccio. While Sir Richard Armstrong and his Welsh forces are hardly as celebrated as Furtwängler and the Philharmonia, they acquit themselves very well here, and Söderström is affecting throughout the program.

I cleaned up as much of the noise on the Flagstad performance as I could, while addressing the balance and pitch problems found on the Turnabout LP I used for the transfer. The final measures of "Im Abendrot" are missing, unfortunately. The sound from the Söderström LP is good.

Söderström follows the published sequence of the songs - "Frühling," "September," "Beim Schlafengehen" and "Im Abendrot." Flagstad and Furtwängler had performed "Beim Schlafengehen" first and "Frühling" third. The sequencing is somewhat arbitrary - Strauss's publisher Ernst Roth had determined the order and dubbed them the Four Last Songs. Roth's sequence did not follow the order of composition, nor was the set Strauss's final work. He composed the song "Malven" later in 1948.

The download includes complete scans of the Söderström LP's gatefold cover, which includes texts and translations.