Mojo - The Music Magazine

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The brightest Spark in the box is here to edutain you.

“While continuing to collect Air Jordan sneakers and DVDs of '70s Japanese "pinky violence" films, my musical obsession this past year (and the ten years previous) has been the Last Four Songs of Richard Strauss. I have a very large collection of sopranos performing what I think are the most beautiful songs of all time. Richard Strauss composed these songs in 1948, a year before he died. The first of the four, Im Abendtrot, was set to a poem by Joseph von Eichendorff and the last three to poems by Herman Hesse. Strauss didn't live to hear these songs performed live, which adds extra poignancy to what are already almost unbearably poignant musical statements. Being in a band with a rather idiosyncratic lead singer, my preference for Elizabeth Schwartzkopf's 1966 recording is due to her being the most idiosyncratic of all the singers who have attempted to sing these works. On some objective level, there are better singers (probably Gundula Janowitz in 1973 with von Karajan conducting) but for sheer heart-wrenching feeling, Schwartzkopf kicks ass. I now listen to fewer and fewer pieces of music but played more repeatedly. I obsessively listen to Sister Ray by The Velvet Underground and Sketches Of Spain by Miles Davis. Likewise, I've heard these Strauss songs so many times that they are now as catchy to me as any Chinn and Chapman ditty from the '70s. They're no longer high brow. They're no longer in German. They're no longer post-war. They are, simply, the last four songs that anybody needs to hear.”

Check out this month’s MOJO for more Best Things from Billy Connolly, U2 Oasis and more.