Recordings of Strauss' late masterpieces, the Four Last Songs, are so plentiful that any new addition to the catalogue is up against very stiff competition indeed. For some, the icy poignancy of Elisabeth Schwarzkopf's account with Szell, the visceral power of Jessye Norman's with Masur or the sheer sense of finality of Soile Isokoski's more recent account are unmatchable; personally, I would also add to these Kiri Te Kanawa's later recording with Georg Solti and the Vienna Philharmonic, which has a creamy, floating beauty of its own and an attention to the text for which Dame Kiri is often underrated.
Nevertheless, there's much to be recommended in this new version from Nina Stemme, who is quietly but rapidly ascending in fame and importance. Her performance as Isolde in the famous Domingo recording was deeply alluring and can be experienced in person this summer at Glyndebourne; she also impressed with her vivid portrayal of Amelia in Verdi's Un ballo in maschera at Covent Garden in 2005 and will return there in 2008 for the same composer's Simon Boccanegra (also playing a character called Amelia, as it happens). Such a pedigree makes the disc worth exploring, and, contrary to some of the early reviews, it's far from disappointing.
To take the main section of the programme first, the Four Last Songs are sung with an airy sweetness that promotes the composer's association of death with final beauty. This performance of Frühling ('Spring'), for instance, moves at quite a pace (it's thirty seconds shorter than Schwarzkopf and Szell), taking the tempo from the singer's expressive vocal phrasing rather than indulging ponderously over certain tiny details. Antonio Pappano's accompaniment with the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House is exemplary here and throughout, proving to be both spacious and sensitive to Stemme's needs. Richard Clews' horn solo in September is played with perfect intonation and manages to sound mournful and dignified in place of the sometimes twee performances of the solo that one hears from time to time.
One of the loveliest songs of all time, Beim Schlafengehen ('On going to sleep') receives an equally superb rendition here, with the only caveat being the somewhat tentative violin solo (though this may have been a fault of the technicians: one has to turn the volume up considerably to hear it properly). Once again, Pappano receives the plaudits for capturing the bittersweet style, but Stemme steals the show with her poise and vocal splendour; the two artists work together with commitment to breath as one, and nuances of tempo and text are noticeably enhanced as a result.
The group of songs is capped by a particularly powerful and wistful Im Abendrot ('At sunset'). Those who have found the performance lacking in authority would do well to re-listen to this track, which really does convey a sense of finality thanks to Stemme's word emphases. Pappano opts for a speed exactly in between Solti's quite rapid account and Szell's very valedictory (if somewhat depressingly funereal) one.
The latter point seems pertinent to the disc as a whole, which deals with finality from other points of view, too. The last scenes of Strauss' first wholly successful opera, Salome, and his final completed opera, Capriccio, explore savage, psychotic death and the resolution between text and music in the composition of an opera, respectively. Stemme is a fiery but sensuous Salome, committing significant vocal reserves to the character, while her Countess Madeleine is so expressively self-assured that this is surely a role for her to take on in the theatre in the future. Pappano is an excellent partner again, creating wonders out of the Moonlight music in Capriccio, and ex-Royal Opera Young Artist Liora Grodnikaite is ideal as Herodias in the Salome extract.
In all, a very rewarding and fresh look at familiar material, and if it's not reminiscent of Schwarzkopf or Isokoski, who cares? I, for one, don't want everything always to be the same.