Strauss, R: Du meines Herzens Krönelein, Op. 21 No. 2

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.

When Dame Margaret Price died in January 2011, the musical world reacted in an understandably emotional fashion. By contrast, the Welsh soprano herself was a woman with an understated approach to her life, eschewing the frenetic international star system in favour of loyalty to a select few major opera houses. She bade farewell to public performance in 1999, retiring to rural Wales where she turned to breeding golden retrievers. Although a local vicar persuaded her to perform in a charity concert, she found the occasion so nerve-wracking that her dogs finally became the only audience for her singing.

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.

“Since her full blooming on the operatic stage, Kirchschlager’s mezzo has grown enormously - and her performing character with it. She still knows how to hold a recital audience in the palm of her hand, but now there’s a newly expansive energy firing all she sings […..] Kirchschlager’s dark mezzo smouldered with sensuality,” so wrote the Times after Angelika Kirchschlager and Roger Vignoles’ February 2010 Wigmore Hall performance of the same collection of Hugo Wolf and Richard Strauss songs.

Angelika Kirchschlager is regarded as one of the most distinguished mezzo-sopranos of her generation and in particular is recognised internationally for her interpretations of Richard Strauss. She gives regular solo recitals, balancing her operatic career with lieder performances. Eminent piano accompanist and leading authority on the song repertoire, Roger Vignoles, is her long-standing musical partner.

Now in this collection Kirchschlager and Vignoles collaborate to perform nine Strauss songs as well as Wolf’s lieder to texts by Eduard Mörike and Gottfried Keller. Wolf set 43 of Mörike’s poems to music during a period of intense creativity in which he developed a heady new musical language. Kirchschlager delights in the opportunity to convey this with glorious colouring of phrases which are fittingly matched by the piano. The recording provides encores of music from each composer, including Strauss’ triumphant ‘Nichts,’ a fitting end to a compelling programme.

Irmgard Seefried’s interpretation of the Composer in Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos is said to have inspired Strauss himself to exclaim that until then he had not known how good his Composer was. She was also one of the most sought-after concert singers and lieder recitalists of her age. Not released until now, the many recordings included in the present CD attest to the richness and variety of that palette even during the early years of her career. The earliest of these recordings are Peter Cornelius's Brautlieder from the heyday of the Romantic art song, settings in which the soprano's exemplary treatment of the words and the vocal line are fully in evidence.The affinities between this cycle of six songs and the traditional German folksong offer the singer - a native of Swabia - a welcome opportunity to colour her tone even further, an approach that is also found in her recordings of songs by Mozart, Brahms,Wolf and two lesser-known composers, Wilhelm Kienzl and Joseph Marx.This compilation of Irmgard Seefried's recordings from the first ten years of her career in Vienna additionally includes some of Strauss's most popular songs, songs such as Morgen and Allerseelen that make it clear why, as we noted above, their composer held the soprano in such high regard.

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