Strauss, R: Schön sind, doch kalt die Himmelssterne, Op. 19, No. 3

This CD features Finnish star soprano Soile Isokoski and her longstanding duo partner Marita Viitasalo, with a selection of Lieder by Richard Strauss.

Included are such popular songs as Zueignung, Cäcilie, Morgen!, and Allerseelen. Along with the cycle of 3 Ophelia-Lieder and Strauss’s final complete composition, Malven, this collection spans 65 years of Strauss’ writing.

The music of Richard Strauss has been a cornerstone of the singing career of Soile Isokoski: “His music just sits so well in my voice, in terms of both its range and its lyrical quality.”

Soile Isokoskis’ earlier CD release of Strauss Orchestral Songs and Vier letzte Lieder (ODE9822) became a major commercial success and earned her a Gramophone Award.

Soile Isokoski is hailed as one of the finest singers in the world (“Isokoski's lyric soprano is like liquid gold.” – David L. Kirk, Fanfare Magazine, March/April 2009) whose recordings have been praised as top-choice and garnered the highest distinctions at the BBC Music Magazine Awards, Gramophone Awards and MIDEM Classical Awards.

The name of Richard Strauss immediately conjures up thoughts of operas and large-scale symphonic works; but we tend to underestimate his lieder, a genre to which the composer devoted no fewer than 205 pieces! Like a glorious sunset culminating in the Four Last Songs, they mark the conclusion of the illustrious tradition of Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Wolf and Mahler.

Acclaimed and cherished as one of Australia’s finest operatic artists, Nance Grant had a voice possessed with beauty and power, an ease of technique, a perfection of phrasing and taste that cemented her place in the hearts of Australian music lovers. This long overdue tribute presents one of the great sopranos from down under - in recordings previously thought lost.

Nance Grant chose to stay close to her family in Australia rather than pursue an international career, even though Sir Edward Downes insisted he could ‘fill her books’ with performances in Britain and Europe. So this double album offers those who never had the opportunity to hear her, the gift of discovering a voice of magnitude and generosity, and for those who grew up hearing her on stage, the chance to reacquaint themselves with her artistry.

The original tapes from radio broadcasts of the 1960s and ’70s have been carefully restored to give more than a hint of the majesty of Nance Grant in a characteristic range of repertoire. The recordings represent significant landmarks in the development of opera in Australia: the emerging Victorian State Opera’s enormously successful Idomeneo, re di Creta, and Maria Stuarda under the direction of Richard Divall; Australian Opera’s Ariadne auf Naxos, Fidelio and Tannhäuser with Sir Edward Downes; and one of the first of the Australian Opera/ABC collaborations presenting concert performances of Wagner operas, with Grant as Sieglinde in Die Walküre conducted by Leif Segerstam.

The programme also pays homage to Nance’s considerable concert career, including a complete song recital - Greig, Richard Hageman and Richard Strauss - with pianist Geoffrey Parsons, Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder with the West Australian Symphony Orchestra, and an excerpt from Mendelssohn’s Elijah.

The great American mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne celebrated her her 70th birthday in January 2004 and that year also marked 50 years since her professional debut.

Horne’s debut in 1954 was in in Los Angeles. That same year her name and voice was brought to many more people than could ever hear her in the opera house through the 1954 film Carmen Jones in which she sang the dubbed voice of Dorothy Dandridge. Her Covent Garden debut was as Marie in Wozzeck (sung in English at that time) in 1964 – she had made her San Francisco debut in 1960 with the same role. It was with Joan Sutherland that Marilyn Horne found the perfect vocal partner and their performances in the great bel canto operas by Rossini, Bellini and Donizetti took the opera world by storm in the 1960s and early 1970s.

By the time she retired in 1998, Marilyn Horne’s long and distinguished career embraced an enormous variety of operatic roles, as well as a wide variety of solo song ranging from Schubert, Schumann and Mahler through to modern American songs. Such a wide repertory was due to the sheer range of her voice and its remarkable flexibility, a voice that could sustain long lines of melody as well as negotiate the most florid vocal pyrotechnics.

Marilyn Horne participated in a number of complete opera recordings (among them classic recordings of Norma and Semiramide with Joan Sutherland) for Decca and also made ten recital programmes.

The complete recitals are now reissued in their entirety as a Collector Edition on 11 CDs and preserve the original sequence of music as presented on vinyl; the original LP cover art is reproduced for the CD sleeves.