Amar Mehmedinovic

As usual, the Met concludes its season with two orchestral concerts at Carnegie Hall, the first is an all-Richard Strauss program that includes Yannick Nézet-Séguin leading Elza van den Heever in a selection of the composer’s Orchesterlieder.

Chris’s Cache offers today a smörgåsbord of those sumptuous soprano songs performed by celebrated Straussians Edita Gruberovà, Genia Kühmeier, Soile Isokoski, and Asmik Grigorian along with five by Jonas Kaufmann, once again proving he can sing anything.

It’s odd but satisfying that the Met, after neglecting to perform any Strauss last season, has allowed Nézet-Séguin and van den Heever to lean so heavily into his works this season, first with the heralded Die Frau ohne Schatten revival followed by the just-concluded new production of Salome. As an addendum, Leon Botstein leads a concert performance of Guntram at Carnegie Hall on 6 June starring Angela Meade and her husband John Matthew Myers as Freihild and Guntram.

Strauss at the Met continues this November with a revival of its 1983 production of Arabella with Rachel Willis-Sørensen, Louise Alder and Tomasz Konieczny.

Of today’s quintet, Gruberova offers the five Brentano Lieder, while the others present a selection of the usual suspects. Isokoski included some of these on her celebrated Vier letzte Lieder recording, but I couldn’t find any Strauss in the exquisite Kühmeier’s sparse discography. Kaufmann included most of his selections in his early Harmonia Mundi CD of Strauss songs with piano, but I haven’t run across other documents of him performing these songs with orchestra. Grigorian cancelled her recent scheduled Vier letzte Lieder at Carnegie Hall, so we’ll have to wait until a rumored Met Salome in a few seasons to sample live her Strauss.

Strauss Orchesterlieder

An die Nacht
Ich wollt ein Sträusslein binden
Säusle, liebe Myrthe
Als mir dein Lied erklang
Amor

Edita Gruberova

Orchestre Philharmonique de Nice
Conductor: Friedrich Haider
Nice
2? February 1999

Cäcilie
Heimliche Aufforderung
Meinem Kinde
Ich wollt’ ein Sträusslein binden
Morgen
Zueignung
Ruhe, meine Seele

Genia Kühmeier

WDR Symphony Orchestra
Conductor: Semyon Bychkov
Philharmonie, Köln
21 September 2007
Broadcast

Hymne an die Liebe
Das Rosenband
Die heiligen drei Konige
Morgen
Cacilie

Soile Isokoski

BBC Symphony Orchestra
Conductor: Andrew Litton
Barbican Hall, London
28 January 2009
Broadcast

Ruhe, meine Seele
Ich trage meine Minne
Morgen
Cäcilie
Zueignung

Jonas Kaufmann

City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
Conductor: Andris Nelsons
Paris. Théâtre des Champs-Elysées
12 March 2012
Broadcast

Cäcilie
Zueignung
Morgen

Asmik Grigorian

Wiener Symphoniker
Conductor: Petr Popelka
Musikverein
18 January 2025
Broadcast

Each of these Strauss samplers can be downloaded by clicking on the icon of a cloud with an arrow pointing downward on the audio player above and the resulting mp3 file will appear in your download directory.

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