Schwanengesang

Different as we all are – we face one great leveller, brooking no exceptions: we must all die, and all life on earth ends. When, where and how – that is the great question, driving us onward for as long as humans have been able to think and feel. What is death like? Does it resemble the vision of Richard Strauss, then only 34 years of age, a look back, sublime, august, a grand ascent towards a gleaming horizon? Or did the same composer come closer to an unfathomable truth when – in 1948, just one year before his own death – he allowed the soul to sing freely in his Four Last Songs, gifting us earthlings with one of the most touching works in all of classical music? The Finnish soprano Anu Komsi and Sakari Oramo on the conductor’s podium delve into this overwhelming realm, where melancholy merges with peace, farewells and intimations of death. Dying, however, can also be imagined in quite a different manner… and the British composer George Benjamin has a song about that.