The Four Last Songs, Op. posth., for soprano and orchestra are – with the exception of the song "Malven" (Mallows), composed later the same year – the final completed works of Richard Strauss. They were composed in 1948 when the composer was 84.
Kirsten Flagstad (c. 1945)
Richard Georg Strauss was a German composer and conductor best known for his tone poems and operas. Considered a leading composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras, he has been described as a successor of Richard Wagner and Franz Liszt. Along with Gustav Mahler, he represents the late flowering of German Romanticism, in which pioneering subtleties of orchestration are combined with an advanced harmonic style.
Portrait of Strauss by Max Liebermann (1918)
Strauss aged 22
Pauline de Ahna Strauss, c. 1900
Strauss villa at Garmisch-Partenkirchen. Built 1906. Architect: Emanuel Seidl.