Kurt Masur - Strauss: Tod und Verklärung, Don Juan & 4 letzte Lieder [4 Last Songs] (1999/2020)

Here is a portrait of the composer in his buoyant youth and his melancholy old age. Strauss wrote the tone poems in his twenties, the songs 60 years later. Don Juan, in a bright major key, bursts with vigor, confidence, and exultant passion, but ends with a short, subdued, spooky coda in the minor. Death and Transfiguration opens in dark minor and ends in radiant major; along the way, the music dreams, sings, rebels, soars to an ecstatic climax, and subsides into serene resignation. This is death envisioned by a young man: idealized, remote, unreal. The songs, on the other hand, are suffused with an old man's premonition of death's inexorable reality; evoking fragrant gardens and trilling birds, the music ends in peaceful acceptance. Masur, in this live recording, inspires his splendid players to unbridled, superb performances; they revel in Strauss's glittering, luscious orchestration with ravishing solos and a glorious sound. Deborah Voigt's soprano, with its shimmering radiance and vibrant intensity, can blend into or soar above the orchestra; a renowned Strauss interpreter whose effort here compares favorably with the legendary account by Elizabeth Schwarzkopf, Voigt approaches the songs in a deeply felt, simple, direct, and outgoing manner, and she gives the composer's arching melodies a riveting, thrilling ecstasy. --Edith Eisler