Strauss, R: Drei Lieder der Ophelia Op. 67

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.

"I thank my Almighty Creator for the gift and inspiration of the female voice." R. Strauss

Strauss displays a consistent ability to bring out the best in a singer, and soprano Gillian Keith - accompanied here by pianist Simon Lepper - amply showcases Straussʼ unique reverence for the female voice.

In song-writing, as in orchestral music, Richard Strauss hit his stride early. His range and confidence is displayed in this group of songs; as the selection shows, he wrote some superb examples in his teens, and by his mid-twenties was already an assured master of the Lied; mastery which continued to develop into old age.

Generations of singers have been inspired by Straussʼ devotion to song; from the dramatic, to the lyric, to the coloratura, Straussʼ songs offer something very special.

In this recital of specially chosen Lieder are many songs which have earned their place in the repertoire, along with less-often heard works such as Mädchenblumen and Drei Lieder der Ophelia, which compliment those more familiar and are at the heart of this recital.

One of Canadaʼs leading lyric sopranos, Gillian Keith made her Royal Opera Covent Garden debut as Zerbinetta in Straussʼ Ariadne auf Naxos, a role she has gone on to repeat with great success. A past winner of the prestigious Kathleen Ferrier Award, she has a natural affinity for Straussʼ music.

Teodora Gheorghiu's second album for Aparte is 'Art Nouveau': the core is Richard Strauss' Op. 22 and 67, framed by a selection of songs from different cultural groups, linguistically and aesthetically. Gheorghiu's homage to 18th-century soprano Anna de Amicis included mostly premiere recordings of arias by Mozart, Gluck, Borghi, Cafaro and Myslivecek and was named Disc of the Month by International Record Review, by Opera magazine, and was BBC Radio Three’s Disc of the Week.

Teodora appears at Glyndebourne this summer, singing the role of Zerbinetta, Strauss again, in a new production of 'Ariadne auf Naxos' with Soile Isokoski. Live broadcast to cinemas and online on 4 June 2013.

This delightful recital of Strauss songs by Dame Felicity Lott focuses on songs composed between 1885 and 1901, the years of Strauss’s richest song-writing genius.

Partnered by her long-time collaborator, Graham Johnson, Dame Felicity sings various Nocturnes and Fantasies, songs about flowers, and then, grouped as “Valedictions and Lullabies”, some of Strauss’s best-known songs, including Allerseelen and Muttertändelei.

The disc concludes with one of his best-loved songs, ‘Morgen’. This is the last of the four Op.27 wedding-gift songs for his wife, Pauline de Ahna: “…breathless rapture turned into music, one of the great songs of the world…” [Michael Kennedy, 2003]

Dame Felicity Lott is considered one of the greatest sopranos of the 21st Century. Her operatic repertoire ranges from Handel to Stravinsky; and her formidable international reputation is as an interpreter of the great roles of Mozart and Strauss.

Graham Johnson is recognised as one of the world’s leading vocal accompanists. He was made an OBE in the 1994 Queen's Birthday Honours list and he was also made an Honorary Member of the Royal Philharmonic Society in February 2010.

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