Richard Strauss, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, George Szell, Radio-Symphonie-Orchester Berlin – Four Last Songs (And Five Other Songs With Orchestra) (VG/VG+) – LP, UK 1974

Four Last Songs (And Five Other Songs With Orchestra) is an LP by Richard Strauss, George Szell, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Radio-Symphonie-Orchester Berlin from 1974 released on the His Master's Voice label.

About this album

Schwarzkopf and Szell bring luminous authority to Strauss’s Four Last Songs and the companion orchestral songs. Elisabeth Schwarzkopf’s poised, finely shaded soprano is set against George Szell’s disciplined orchestral direction with the Radio-Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, giving Strauss’s late works a rare blend of intimacy and control. Recorded in the 1960s, this programme balances the autumnal radiance of the Four Last Songs with earlier favourites such as Zueignung and Freundliche Vision, showing both the composer’s sumptuous Romantic inheritance and his modern harmonic restraint. It remains one of the most admired interpretations of Strauss’s orchestral song repertoire.