Richard Strauss (1864-1949) Four Last Songs First performance

Richard Strauss (1864-1949)
Four Last Songs
First performance: May 22, 1950, Philharmonia Orchestra, London, Wilhelm Furtwängler cond., Kirsten Flagstad,
soprano. First Tanglewood performance: August 24, 1979, New York Philharmonic, Zubin Mehta cond., Montserrat
Caballé, soprano. First BSO performance: July 8, 1983, Tanglewood, Seiji Ozawa cond., Leontyne Price, soprano.
Most recent Tanglewood performance: July 31, 2010, Juanjo Mena cond., Hei-Kyung Hong, soloist.
In 1947, when Strauss made the first sketches for Im Abendrot, he went to London, where Sir Thomas Beecham had
organized a festival of his music. At a press conference a young reporter asked the eighty-three-year-old composer
about his plans for the future. “Oh,” said Strauss, never one to waste words, “to die.” Not quite two years later he
realized that plan, remarking to his daughter-in-law that death was just the way he had composed it at twenty-five in
his tone poem Death and Transfiguration. But first there was work to be done—the composition of a DuetConcertino for clarinet, bassoon, and orchestra, and the writing of five songs.*
The world in which he had grown up and in whose artistic life he had played such a prominent part had collapsed
about him. He was in poor health, tired, discouraged, but when he read Im Abendrot (At Evening Glow) by the
Romantic poet von Eichendorff, he was deeply moved. Its description of an old couple who have, hand in hand,
traversed sorrow and joy, and who are now looking at what is perhaps death, perfectly fit the Strausses’ own
situation in the fifty-fourth year of their marriage. To his Eichendorff song, which alludes softly to Death and
Transfiguration in its last bars, he added three songs to verses by Hermann Hesse—no less inspired than Im
Abendrot, particularly Beim Schlafengehen (Upon Going to Sleep), in which a poem of three stanzas becomes a song
with four, the third, wordless one being sung by a solo violin. Pauline Strauss, the composer’s wife, had been a
renowned soprano in her youth, and the sound of the soprano voice was the one sound Richard loved even more than
that of the French horn. Like his father, Franz Strauss, the horn player, Pauline, the soprano, was difficult, but her
husband loved her steadfastly and he said so in many of his compositions. All the lovely soprano lines he wrote are
one unending love song to her, and Im Abendrot—but indeed the whole set of four songs—is the last of these love
letters.
MICHAEL STEINBERG
Michael Steinberg was program annotator of the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1976 to 1979, and after that of
the San Francisco Symphony and New York Philharmonic. Oxford University Press has published three
compilations of his program notes, devoted to symphonies, concertos, and works for chorus and orchestra.
* Five? Yes: Strauss kept and orchestrated four songs, the ones now known as the Four Last (not his title, of
course), but sent a fifth, with piano accompaniment only, to Maria Jeritza, the Czech soprano who had sung so
gloriously in many of his operas. Jeritza, who, concealed behind her married name, is also the dedicatee of
September, kept that fifth song, Malven (Mallows), to herself, and it came to light only after her death in 1982.
RICHARD STRAUSS Four Last Songs
Frühling
Spring
In dämmrigen Grüften
Träumte ich lang
Von deinem Bäumen und blauen Lüften,
Von deinem Duft und Vogelsang.
In dusk-dim vaults
I’ve long dreamed
of your trees and blue skies,
of your fragrance and bird-song.
Nun liegst du erschlossen
In Gleis und Zier,
Von Licht übergossen
Wie ein Wunder vor mir.
Now you are revealed,
glittering, adorned,
bathed in light
like a miracle before me.
Du kennst mich wieder,
Du lockst mich zart,
Es zittert durch all meine Glieder
Deine selige Gegenwart!
You know me once again,
you beckon to me tenderly,
your blessed presence
sets all my limbs trembling!
Hermann Hesse
September
September
Der Garten trauert,
Kühl sinkt in die Blumen der Regen.
Der Sommer schauert
Still seinem Ende entgegen.
The garden mourns,
the cooling rain falls upon the flowers.
The summer shudders,
silently facing his end.
Golden tropft Blatt um Blatt
Nieder vom hohen Akazienbaum.
Sommer lächelt erstaunt und matt
In den sterbenden Gartentraum.
Lange noch bei den Rosen
Bleibt er stehn, sehnt sich nach Ruh.
Langsam tut er die
Müdgeword’nen Augen zu.
Leaf after golden leaf drops down
from the high acacia tree.
Summer, surprised and weak,
smiles at the fading garden-dream.
Yet he lingers still,
among the roses, yearning for rest.
Slowly he closes
his wearied eyes.
Hermann Hesse
Beim Schlafengehen
Upon Going to Sleep
Nun der Tag mich müd gemacht,
Soll mein sehnliches Verlangen
Freundlich die gestirnte Nacht
Wie ein müdes Kind empfangen.
Now the day has made me weary:
let the starry night gather up
my ardent longings, lovingly,
as it would a tired child.
Hände, lasst von allem Tun,
Stirn vergiss du alles Denken,
Alle meine Sinne nun
Wollen sich in Schlummer senken.
Hands, leave off all your toil,
mind, put aside all your thoughts:
all my senses long
to settle, now, into slumber.
Und die Seele unbewacht,
Will in freien Flügen schweben,
Um im Zauberkreis der Nacht
Tief und tausendfach zu leben.
And the soul, unencumbered,
wants to soar in free flight
into night’s magic realm,
to live deeply, a thousandfold.
Hermann Hesse
Im Abendrot
At Sunset
Wir sind durch Not und Freude
Gegangen Hand in Hand:
Vom Wandern ruhen wir
Nun überm stillen Land.
Through pain and joy
we’ve traveled hand in hand;
let’s rest from wandering, now,
above the quiet land.
Rings sich die Täler neigen,
Es dunkelt schon die Luft,
Zwei Lerchen nur noch steigen
Nachträumend in den Duft.
Around us the valleys are waning,
already the sky is darkening,
yet, still, two larks, dream-seeking,
soar upward into the air.
Tritt her und lass sie schwirren,
Bald ist es Schlafenszeit,
Dass wir uns nicht verirren
In dieser Einsamkeit.
Step close and let them fly,
it’s nearly time for sleep:
lest we lose our way
in this solitude.
O weiter, stiller Friede!
So tief im Abendrot.
Wie sind wir wandermüde—
Ist dies etwa der Tod?
O spacious, silent peace,
so deep in evening’s glow!
How travel-weary we are—
Could this perhaps be death?
Josef von Eichendorff
trans. Marc Mandel
German texts set to music by Richard Strauss copyright Boosey & Hawkes, Inc., ©1950, renewed 1977.