Strauss: Ein Heldenleben - 4 letzte Lieder

The first recording by Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra for BIS centred on Berlioz' Symphonie Fantastique, a work which stands squarely on the threshold between Classicism and Romanticism. Nézet-Séguin's interpretation brilliantly demonstrated this ambivalence, as the reviewer in CD Review on BBC Radio 3 remarked: 'A Fantastic Symphony that relishes in the transparency and the delicacy of Berlioz's scoring while remaining true to its vivid imagination and dramatic punch'. On the follow-up to that exciting release is another work that straddles a musical divide, namely Richard Strauss' Four Last Songs. Composed in 1948, these late blooms of an unabashed Romanticism stood in the midst of a musical landscape which featured the twelve-tone serialism of the Darmstadt School, John Cage's prepared piano and the first examples of musique concrète. In accordance with Strauss's wish, it was the dramatic soprano Kirsten Flagstad who first performed the songs, but they