Lucy Crowe & Anna Tilbrook - Longing. Lieder by Strauss, Berg, Schoenberg - The Sunday Times

Lucy Crowe and Anna Tilbrook celebrate two decades of their recital partnership with this album of songs by Richard Strauss and his younger contemporaries. Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg, later famed for their anti-romanticism and abandonment of tonality, wrote their respective Four Lieder and Seven Early Songs with a backwards glance at the 19th century, but Crowe’s diamantine tone and Tilbrook’s impulsive playing tell us that modern music was on the horizon. Both are in their element on the Strauss, particularly the soulful Tomorrow. On the valedictory Four Last Songs Crowe gives notice that her Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier will soon blossom into a Marschallin, and Tilbrook’s rapt playing almost makes one forget Strauss’s orchestra.