Richard Strauss: Four last songs
Right now I'm listening to Jessye Norman singing " Beim Schlafengehen " and still cannot believe there is such a beautiful thing on this earth! It is so wondrous that everything and everyone else must be made a bit better by it. I first listened to this recording 25 years ago and didn't understand it, much less appreciate it. In 1987 I ran across the sheet music in an antique store in Mittenwald, where I could easily imagine Strauss himself had left it before going to dinner before performing his music for the guests in that town. But I'm digressing, something I find quite easy to do here on this blog. I first came to appreciate "Beim Schlafengehen" while listening to the cycle with Elisabeth, a quite mystically gifted person I got to know while teaching at the Goethe Institut. She was telling me about a former boyfriend on the Canary Islands who had passed away but whose presence was still with her and which entered the room as we listened to the Swiss