Rickard Söderberg

The singer Rickard Söderberg and the pianist Johan Reis have performed over 400 concerts together and built up a unique intuitive music making together. At this concert, they offer music from their first joint album – Vier Letzte Lieder. Richard Strauss was active during the first half of the 20th century and can without exaggeration be called one of the most important opera composers in the history of music, who also succeeded in connecting different musical eras in his music. During his last year of life, he summarizes everything in his Vier Letzte Lieder, the Four Last Songs. It turned out to be the very last Strauss completed. Filled with a bright melancholy and certainty about impending death, he created in his songs a world of sound that has enchanted people ever since they were first performed by Kirsten Flagstad in 1950. The lyrics are written by Herman Hesse and Joseph von Eichendorff. The album also contains Franz Liszt's three magnificent settings of the Renaissance poet Francesco Petrarca. They are most similar to mini-operas with recitatives, arias and cabalets where the full register of the voice is displayed in caressing melodies and dramatic outbursts.