Nina Stemme To Release Richard Strauss Album

Nina Stemme, Isolde to Plácido Domingo’s Tristan in EMI’s multi-award-winning Tristan und Isolde recording of 2005, launches her exclusive contract with EMI Classics with a Richard Strauss programme with a twist. Her collaborators are once again the orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and its music director, Antonio Pappano.

The Four Last Songs are coupled with the Interlude and Final Scene of Capriccio. In addition, Nina Stemme and Antonio Pappano have included what Pappano refers to as a “cracker”, a contrasting work with an altogether different flavor and atmosphere, the dramatic and scandalous final scene of Salome from 1905, in which the heroine makes love to the severed head of John the Baptist.

Speaking of Stemme’s interpretation of the Four Last Songs, Pappano enthuses, “I trust the warmth of Nina’s voice. There are a lot of lighter voices that have recorded the piece but you have to remember that Kirsten Flagstad sang the premiere and it’s that kind of ample voice with warmth and body – Nina’s voice – that I think is too rarely heard in this repertoire.”

Set to a poem by Joseph von Eichendorff and three by Hermann Hesse, Richard Strauss’s Four Last Songs are autumnal masterpieces from a composer who devoted much of his long life to writing for the voice. At the pinnacle of 20th century concert repertoire, these songs about old age, fulfillment and death are reflective, poignant and haunting. Sadly, Strauss died in 1949, the year before they were premiered by the great Wagnerian soprano Kirsten Flagstad with Wilhelm Furtwängler conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra, London.

UK Release: April 2007.

Image credit: Photographer - Tanja Neimann, Copyright - Tanja Neimann.