Composed in 1948 when Richard Strauss was 84 years old, the Vier letze Lieder represents the German composer’s deeply moving farewell. These four songs for soprano and orchestra draw inspiration from poems by Hermann Hesse and Joseph von Eichendorff. The compositions are breathtakingly beautiful, blending nostalgia, serenity, and peace in the face of death. Published under this title after Strauss's death, the Vier letze Lieder was premiered in London in 1950 by Kirsten Flagstad and Wilhelm Furtwängler, a few months after the composer passed away. To this day, they remain among the most moving masterpieces for voice and orchestra…
Watch the most beautiful performances of Richard Strauss’s Vier letzte Lieder on medici.tv!
The Vier letze Lieder (Four Last Songs) is a song cycle for soprano and orchestra, composed by the German musician Richard Strauss in 1948, when he was 84 years old. After the end of the Second World War, the German composer stayed in Montreux and Pontresina, where he began composing what would become his final masterpiece. Three of the four Lieder: Frühling (Spring), September (September), and Beim Schlafengehen (On Going to Sleep) are set to poems by the writer Hermann Hesse, whom Strauss had discovered the year before. The fourth song Im Abendrot (In the Glow of Sunset), uses an earlier text by the Romantic poet Joseph von Eichendorff. It was the first song Strauss completed in the spring of 1948, with initial sketches dating back to the winter of 1946–1947. Strauss orchestrated the final page of the score, September, on 20 September 1948, unaware that he had just written the last note in his musical oeuvre. He passed away less than a year later, on 8 September 1949, without ever hearing a performance of his work.
A soul-baring musical testament
Contrary to what the title suggests, this cycle was not conceived as a set by Strauss himself. The composer’s editor at Boosey & Hawkes, Ernst Roth, gave it a posthumous name and chose the order in which the four Lieder are almost always performed today. Written for a large orchestra with sumptuous timbres, these pieces owe much to Strauss’s extensive experience as an orchestrator — one of the most accomplished of his time. The soprano line is beautifully pure and melodic, undoubtedly inspired by his wife Pauline, who was an opera singer. The Vier letze Lieder concluded a career that spanned over 60 years in an atmosphere of serenity and peace in the face of death. The cycle also echoes an early symphonic poem, Death and Transfiguration, written in 1889.
Strauss’s Vier letze Lieder on medici.tv
The premiere of Vier letzte Lieder took place on 22 May 1950 at the Royal Albert Hall in London, eight months after the composer’s death. The performance featured soprano Kirsten Flagstad accompanied by the Philharmonia Orchestra under the direction of Wilhelm Furtwängler. medici.tv, the best streaming platform for classical music, invites you to (re)discover this masterpiece of the vocal-orchestral repertoire! On this page, discover all the performances of this twilight masterpiece available in our extensive catalog, and let yourself be transported by the breathtaking beauty of Richard Strauss’s farewell song. To continue your exploration of the composer’s world, check out our playlist dedicated to his symphonic poems.