Isokoski sings Strauss's Four Last Songs | London Philharmonic Orchestra

By 1948, Richard Strauss had witnessed the destruction of his country from within. Desperate to ignite a cultural rebirth in Germany, he lobbied officials relentlessly to rebuild orchestras and opera houses, but it seemed futile. In a final act of resignation, Strauss wrote his Four Last Songs. ‘Now the day has made me tired’ his soprano sings in Beim Schlafengehen. Strauss’s world was gone forever; these songs its moving epitaph. Soile Isokoski sings them here, after serenades by Mozart including Mozat's last wind serenade, and Gran Duo, Magnus Lindberg’s tilting of orchestral possibility in which he writes only for bright winds against dark brass, contrasting and merging the sonorities of each as he does.