Sonya Yoncheva (soprano); Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal/Rafael Payare
Pentatone PTC5187201 64:15 mins
Having experienced Rafael Payare’s faceless Strauss in a 2018 Royal Philharmonic Orchestra concert (Don Juan and Don Quixote), I feared the worst for this recording. This Heldenleben has its moments, but there are still too many bland, underphrased and inflexible sequences, the opening included. The conductor’s words about this tongue-in-cheek ‘Hero’s Life’ in the booklet don’t include the crucial word ‘humour’, and real exuberance is in short supply.
At least the Montreal Symphony Orchestra is on fine form: leader Andrew Wan turns in a vivid portrait of the ‘Hero’s Helpmate’, and an eloquent bassoon solo ushers in more fine woodwind work in the ‘Works of Peace’ where Strauss makes a tapestry out of his most memorable themes to date. There are some effective crescendos and a brilliant battle, much helped by superb recorded balance, but the ‘Withdrawal from the World’, though sensitively quiet, lacks inner life to its long lines. It’s fascinating to hear an opera diva, Sonya Yoncheva, in Mahler’s Rückert Lieder.
The voice can be unhelpfully cloudy for the clarity needed in the texts, and gives us a bumpy ride in ‘Liebst du um Schönheit’ (‘If you love for beauty’). However, it opens out with rich operatics to fine effect in ‘Um Mitternacht’, the song so often (rightly, in my opinion) described as the most beautiful in the world. ‘Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen’ (‘I have become lost to the world’), has fine phrasing and intensity when needed. Like Payare’s conducting, it’s not idiomatic, but it is worth a listen.