Netrebko, Barenboim - Strauss: Four Last Songs, Ein Heldenleben (2014)

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Netrebko, Barenboim - Strauss: Four Last Songs, Ein Heldenleben (2014)

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Saving the best for last in the Richard Strauss anniversary 2014. The world’s most luxurious soprano, Anna Netrebko, sings Richard Strauss’ sumptuous Four Last Songs, accompanied by the Staatskapelle Berlin and Daniel Barenboim. An irresistible, all-star combination.

Netrebko is a phenomenon. The world’s best-selling active soprano and quite simply, the undisputed superstar – “la prima donna assoluta" (New York Post) – of opera today. Known equally for her poise, her sensuality and her voice’s unmistakable color, Strauss’s elegiac Four Last Songs are an exquisite vehicle for her expressive gifts: Netrebko’s first recording of these gorgeous, iconic songs.

Barenboim: conductor, pianist, humanitarian - perhaps the world’s most complete living musician. A venerated interpreter of Wagner, Mozart, Beethoven and Bruckner, in many ways the music of Richard Strauss represents the apotheosis of Barenboim’s musical ethos. In 1954, the then 11 year-old Barenboim was introduced to his idol, conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler. It was Furtwängler who conducted the world premiere of Strauss’ Four Last Songs in 1949

The Staatskapelle Berlin, one of Germany’s oldest and most prestigious orchestras boasts a proud Strauss tradition including great performances and recording under the composer himself, as well as under great Straussians Felix Weingartner, Leo Blech, Erich Kleiber, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Otto Klemperer, Clemens Krauss, Hans Knappertsbusch, Joseph Keilberth, Ottmar Suitner and Daniel Barenboim.

The Staatskapelle and Barenboim then interpret Ein Heldenleben, one of the most vivid and popular tone poems by Strauss, who himself was Generalmusikdirektor of the Staatskapelle a century ago.

Composer: Richard Strauss
Performer: Anna Netrebko
Conductor: Daniel Barenboim
Orchestra/Ensemble: Berlin Staatskapelle Orchestra

Reviews: Anna Netrebko has been pushing and pushing her voice for the last few years from its original Fach where it was happiest in Donizetti, Bellini and the lighter Puccini and Verdi roles, until now when she bestrides the Met stage as a Lady Macbeth and clearly thinks of herself as a spinto soprano with the world of bel canto left far behind. This has sounded the death-knell of her voice, which was once formerly a quite small but beautiful instrument. And here she is murdering these songs with an intensity of purpose which is chilling. She has now caught the dreaded old Soviet Russian disease - which, ironically, most modern Russian singers are now avoiding - and is in permanent wobble mode, flapping her way through the long phrases, her voice sounding coarse, barely under control and ugly of tone. Her tone is cloudy, she scoops up to notes and her lower register is gritty; it is painful to hear her struggle through these wonderful songs when she cannot sustain a proper legato or spin a seamless line. Nor is her German diction very crisp.

As is so often the case these days, Barenboim is on autopilot and has nothing of note to say about the songs or the showpiece Strauss tone poem which is the companion work to fill the disc; he is simply churning out yet another forgettable recording. You have only to hear the slack and listless opening to know that nothing special is going to happen - although the conductor's own vocalise is quite prominent, so he seems to be enjoying it all the way through. To me, for all its fine playing, this recording carries no sense of occasion at all; it is so limp. The catalogue is bursting with great versions of both masterworks and I won't be adding this to the twenty-plus recordings I own and enjoy.

I hardly need recommend alternatives but for the "Four Last Songs" there is always Janowitz and Karajan, Norman and Masur, Te Kanawa with Davis or Solti, Fleming in two versions, Isokoski, della Casa, Jurinac, Sass, Popp, Hendricks, Price, Arroyo and on and on according to your taste, which might admit one of Schwarzkopf's two studio recordings, even if mine does not - almost any one is preferable. For "Ein Heldenleben", you can go back to the tremendous old Ormandy recording, or any one of Karajan's three studio or two live versions, or Kempe or Reiner or even Oue, all of whose batons can conjure up the vital fire lacking here.