MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2023
Approaching 60,000 reviews
and more.. and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             


Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger

REVIEW


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 

alternatively
CD: MDT AmazonUK AmazonUS

Richard STRAUSS (1864 – 1949)
Vier letzte Lieder (1. Frühling [3:11]; 2. September [4:38]; 3. Beim Schlafengehen [5:27]; 4. Im Abendrot [7:27]) [21:05]
5. Morgen, Op. 27 No. 4 [4:02]
6. Zueignung Op. 10 No. 1 (orch. Robert Heger) [1:38]
Der Rosenkavalier Op. 59 (7. Da geht er hin (The Marschallin’s monologue, Act 1) [5:21]; 8. Marie Theres’ … Hab’ mir’s gelobt (Trio, Act III) [4:21]; 9. Ist ein Traum/Spür’ nur dich (Duet, Act III) [7:24]) [17:05]
Yvonne Kenny (soprano)
Lorina Gore (soprano) (8-9), Kirsti Harms (mezzo) (8-9), David Hibbard (baritone) (9)
Queensland Symphony Orchestra/Johannes Fritsch
rec. 23-27 June 2008, Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Ferry Rd Music Studios, West End, Brisbane, Australia
Sung texts with English translations enclosed
ABC CLASSICS 476 3954 [44:36]

Experience Classicsonline


Many millions of people interested in sports have heard Yvonne Kenny – without probably knowing her name – since she sang the Olympic Hymn at the closing ceremony of the Summer Olympics in Sydney in 2000. Even by then she had behind her a career of some twenty-five years, but her voice was remarkably unaffected by the years. It has remained in good heart during the following decade, where she starred in a lovely recording of Die Csardasfürstin for Naxos. Even later, just a month before the present recording was made, ABC set down a disc with mainly Viennese operetta arias. I had that disc for review and was greatly impressed, though I remarked that she lacked that inimitable Viennese lilt. Her voice on that occasion had lost a little of its silvery brilliance. This is even more obvious here, where I can’t help noting an annoying vibrato in much of what she sings. The nobility of tone and the inflection of words still makes this a worthwhile issue but with predecessors like Schwarzkopf (also mono version from 1953), Della Casa, Isokoski (Ondine ODE 982-2) and Stemme available, all of them in freshest voice and in even more deeply-probing readings this issue is not really competitive.

The Four Last Songs are performed with warmth and inwardness and the autumnal feeling is in a way reinforced by the fragility of which the vibrato is an indicator. That was the case also with Elisabeth Söderström’s recording of the cycle, made when she was about the same age as Ms Kenny is here.

She is more at ease in the two separate songs, where Morgen comes as a companion to the cycle with much the same atmosphere, even though it was written more than half a century earlier. The even earlier Zueignung makes for a refreshing contrast, being powerfully sung.

In the liner-notes Yvonne Kenny states that her greatest influence when singing the Four Last Songs has been Lisa Della Casa and her epoch-making recording from 1953. That was also my first – and for many years only - recording and there can be few better influences. The original interpreter of the songs was Kirsten Flagstad and singers like Jessye Norman (Leipzig Guwandhaus Orchestra, Kurt Masur (Philips)) and Nina Stemme have shown that a dramatic voice can be wonderfully compelling. Della Casa was, like Kenny, a noted Mozart soprano and by and large it is singers of that category that have been most frequently heard in the songs.

Ms Kenny doesn’t mention a particular influence for her Feldmarschallin but like many other sopranos she began as Sophie and then, when her voice matured, opera houses around the world wanted her as the Princess von Werdenberg, a.k.a. Marie Thérèse. ‘The Marschallin is perhaps my favourite role of all’, she reveals in her notes. Here I feel that it is Schwarzkopf more than Della Casa that has been her model, but she is in no way a mere copy. Quite the contrary her reading is individual and engrossing, though also here one must regret that it wasn’t recorded a few years earlier. In fact she recorded substantial chunks from Rosenkavalier ten years earlier on a well-filled highlights disc in Chandos’ ‘Opera in English’ series and it is that disc, rather than the present one, that I would commend to readers. Her Sophie and Octavian (Rosemary Joshua and Diana Montague) are also better than their counterparts here, where Lorina Gore has an even more pronounced vibrato than Yvonne Kenny. The purity of the trio and duet is upset in the consorted passages.

The playing of the Queensland Symphony Orchestra can’t be faulted and the violin solo in Beim Schlafengehen is beautifully played. The recording is honest and finely catches the sublime orchestral colours without being spectacular. The autumnal feeling in the songs is also preserved here.

Intending purchasers should observe that the playing time is uncommonly parsimonious: less than 45 minutes!

Not an unqualified success then, but Yvonne Kenny’s many admirers will find a lot to savour.

Göran Forsling

 

 

 

 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Past and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools






Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.