These Richard Strauss performances were recorded in 1986 at London's Royal Festival Hall by soprano Jessye Norman, with the London Philharmonic Orchestra under conductor Klaus Tennstedt. The album hit best-seller lists when it was released 36 years later, in 2022, a success due to the fact that the performances found Norman in absolutely splendid voice. Norman was always an enthusiastic performer of orchestral song, but she rarely did better than in the assorted Strauss songs that open the program, scaling the entire ...
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These Richard Strauss performances were recorded in 1986 at London's Royal Festival Hall by soprano Jessye Norman, with the London Philharmonic Orchestra under conductor Klaus Tennstedt. The album hit best-seller lists when it was released 36 years later, in 2022, a success due to the fact that the performances found Norman in absolutely splendid voice. Norman was always an enthusiastic performer of orchestral song, but she rarely did better than in the assorted Strauss songs that open the program, scaling the entire structure of her voice down to the warm sentiments of a song like Cäcilie, Op. 27, No. 2, dedicated by Strauss to his wife, Pauline, for their 1894 wedding day. Norman and Tennstedt worked together multiple times during this period, and their obvious sympathy is one of the performance's draws. Tennstedt is lively on his own in the Suite from Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, Op. 60, which forms a kind of entr'acte. The opera Salome is undoubtedly up Norman's alley. The BBC's live sound is quite...
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