[.ca] Four Last Songs/6 Orch Suites

From Amazon.com:
Lovers of the Four Last Songs have come to take good recordings of the set for granted. Jessye Norman's early digital account with Kurt Masur and the Leipzigers is one of the best--powerful, sensuous, and very well recorded. Strauss may have conceived the songs with an ideal voice in mind, but he made a point of asking that Kirsten Flagstad give the first performance of the set. Since then, no comparably endowed soprano, in possession of both the tonal richness and the extraordinary amplitude that were Flagstad's, has recorded the Four Last Songs, save for Norman. The tessitura of the cycle is perfect for her--not too high, with almost every phrase lying in the warm, lustrous middle part of the voice--and Norman shapes the words with consummate skill and sensitivity. To hear her soar out over the orchestra, carrying the most demanding phrases with long-breathed splendor, is to enjoy, for a moment, the return of a golden age. --Ted Libbey

Jessye Norman has what they call in the operatic business an "ample" figure. Judging from this disc, she must be completely hollow inside because she sings the Four Last Songs in what seems like a single breath, and at half the normal speeds. In fact, as sheer sound, this is the most sensual, voluptuous, totally gorgeous vocal record that I have ever heard. Play it for people who think they hate opera singing and they'll be hooked. Words really can't describe the almost decadent richness of Norman's voice, or the way it seems to swell from the speakers and saturate the room with velvety sound. --David Hurwitz

transcendent, outstanding, just about perfect?:
just thinking about this record gives me goosebumps, lots of them. And I've owned it for almost twenty years. I first encountered it in the movie "Year of Living Dangerously", which fans of this record (and I'm sensing there are quite a few) might enjoy seeing. I don't really get the twaddle about too-slow pacing or bad musicianship, some people just like to sound like authorities i guess. For me, it is nearly perfect (though there is one moment where she kind of eats the mic and the levels clip a bit painfully), and most other music pales in comparison. It's kind of the polar opposite to Vivaldi schmaltz, just quietly soulful, not trying to make a big noise about its greatness, or hyping some cloying High Beauty hairballs or whatever most classical seems caught up in...wistfully but peacefully surveying creation and life as the sun slowly sets for the last time.

• Four Last Songs: Fruhling (Hesse)
• Four Last Songs: September (Hesse)
• Four Last Songs: Beim Schlafengehen (Hesse)
• Four Last Songs: Im Abendrot (Eichendorff)
• Songs With Orchestra: Cacilie Op. 27-2 (Hart)
• Songs With Orchestra: Morgen Op. 27-4 (Mackay)
• Songs With Orchestra: Wiegenlied Op. 41-1 (Dehmel)
• Songs With Orchestra: Ruhe, meine Seele Op. 27-1 (Henckell)
• Songs With Orchestra: Meinem Kinde Op. 37-3 (Falke)
• Songs With Orchestra: Zueignung Op. 10-1 (Von Gilm)