Strauss, R: Mein Auge Op. 37 No. 4

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.

A further instalment of this major Hyperion project introduces the American soprano Kiera Duffy, whose performances in the concert hall and on the opera stage have received the highest praise.

This series, skilfully masterminded by the accompanist Roger Vignoles, is carefully shaped around the talents of each singer and strives to serve the cause of both neglected treasures and essential Strauss masterworks. The majority of the music in this beautifully shaped recital was composed between 1888 and 1900, with the exception of the glorious and virtuosic Op 68 Brentano-Lieder, which owes its richness and fluency to the composer’s experience of opera composition.

Duffy gives an impeccable performance, revealing a deep understanding of the complexity of the music, and tackles the final expansive Lied der Frauen with unwavering stamina and faultless intonation. Perceptive booklet notes from Vignoles, and full texts and translations are also included.

Lucia Popp was an absolute audience favourite for several decades. Besides her great operatic roles – first as a coloratura soprano, then in the lyric fach – she always maintained a large concert and lieder repertoire that demonstrated in equal degree her great musicality and charm.

At the Munich Opera Festival in 1984, Lucia Popp presented a combination of lesser-known songs of well-known composers in a programme that formed a musically colourful and harmonious whole. This live recording, made in the intimate rococo hall of the Cuvilliés Theatre, allows us to experience that concert once again.

Lucia Popp was partnered there by Irwin Gage, whose musical qualities matched her own, yet who refrained from placing himself in the foreground. With their opening selection of Schubert they were able to transfix the audience in such a manner that the ensuing group of Schoenberg’s early songs Op. 2 seemed to follow on quite naturally. In Strauss’s Ophelia Songs, Popp displayed her extraordinary ability to portray a stage character swiftly, yet in a manner wellrounded and accurate, by purely vocal means.

The last quarter of this song recital, also devoted to Strauss, was the most popular and was received with frenetic applause. These songs reached a magnificent climax in the encore 'Allerseelen'. This was followed by a return to Schubert with 'An Silvia'. It rounded off a dramatically conceived evening of German Romanticism, a superb example of how Popp could present her admirers with a performance deeply felt in its artistry, but never calculating or sentimental. It makes one regret all the more her all-too-early death.

Richard Strauss, the great composer of symphonic poems and grand operas, wrote solo songs throughout his life: his first compositions, performed within his family circle, were songs and his setting of the poem Malven (Mallows) was to be the last piece he completed. Taking a keen interest in the possibilities and limitations of the human voice, Strauss in the solo song genre found the opportunity to try out various musical options and to discover his own individual style. But the writing of songs also served as a form of relaxation, a way of passing the time. The result is a varied spectrum of atmospheres, moods and emotions: from the jesting tone of Hat gesagt — bleibt’s nicht dabei to the heart-felt declaration of love in Cäcilie and the portrayal of madness of the Three Songs of Ophelia.

Camilla Tilling, whose successful opera career in a very short time has taken her to some of the world’s most prestigious venues — including Covent Garden, the Metropolitan, La Scala and La Monnaie — made her international breakthrough in the role of Sophie in Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier. Ever since, Strauss’s music has held a special place for her, and on her first solo recording she has chosen to perform some of her favourites among his songs. She is partnered by the fine German pianist Paul Rivinius, with violinist Ulf Wallin making a guest appearance in Morgen!, where he plays the solo that Strauss added when making an orchestral version of the song.

Camilla recently starred in the recent production of Hansel and Gretel at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, to great acclaim: “But the second cast was terrific - better on points than the first, with a particularly enchanting Gretel from Camilla Tilling, who had…personal sweetness and vocal charm”. The Telegraph