Release Date: 09/16/2008
Run Time: 55:23

This is the second time Renée Fleming has recorded Strauss' Four Last Songs, and she gives a serene, luminous performance. One of the glories of her handling of the songs is the variety of vocal colors she brings to them. For instance, "Frühling" begins with a throaty duskiness that gives way to silky gossamer as the poetic imagery lifts from "somber shadows" to "blue skies." The specifics of Fleming's interpretation are always rooted in a sure sense of the songs' larger musical trajectory. She has performed this work more than any other in her career; besides having a voice and temperament ideally suited to the songs, she brings a career's worth of experience singing them, giving her both interpretive freedom and deeply considered insight. In the program notes, she is quoted as saying, "When I started learning the epic Four Last Songs, it soon became clear to me that, no matter how well the songs were sung, it was the overall pacing of the piece, combined with the quality of the orchestral playing, that really shaped it." She has stellar collaborators in Christian Thielemann and the Münchner Philharmoniker. Thielemann's reading and the orchestra's playing are luxuriant and ecstatic. A small quibble: the songs should have been placed at the end, rather than at the beginning of the album; the radiance of the performance needs to be followed by silence. In the remaining selections, which include excerpts from Ariadne auf Naxos and Die Ägyptische Helena and various songs, Fleming sings with no less vocal beauty, but the music itself, as lovely as much of it is, overall seems anticlimactic following the sublime songs. The warmth of Decca's sound matches that of the performances. ~ Stephen Eddins, All Music Guide

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Release Date: 09/16/2008
Run Time: 55:23