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Real Wagnerian sopranos are rare, but Jane Eaglen has the deep, rich soprano, as well as the stamina it takes, to be a Brünnhilde. Here she is, off the rock and away from the opera stage, presented in a veritable iron-woman triathlon of late romantic song cycles, all of which tax the human voice to its limits, merely asking it to float and soar above a large orchestra and still sound angelic. While Richard Strauss's 'Four Last Songs' is the ultimate example, Wagner's own 'Wesendonk Lieder' is the prototype for this subgenre of evoked sunsets and dreams: indeed, the desire to make time and season stand still in a nether world between sleep, dreaming and waking is common to nearly every song in all three cycles. The 'Seven Early Songs' of Alban Berg makes a perfect discmate, especially for the Strauss, as it similarly stretches tonality in every beautiful direction without attempting to leave it. These are songs of impossible longing, and they require nearly impossible musicianship to carry off, but Eaglen and conductor Donald Runnicles, with flowing tempos and carefully judged balances, bring you into the reverie and don't let go.
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