Renée Fleming's first recording of the Last Songs, made in 1996 (on RCA), was distinctly mixed. Here Christian Thielemann is a much more natural Straussian, powerful and luxuriant, and Fleming's voice has gained in distinctiveness and diction, to splendidly dramatic effect, often with a real 'float' at the top.

As Fleming explains in a note, the Four Last Songs has become the work that she has performed most often. Throughout the four songs, Fleming not only lavishes every resource of tonal richness at her command, but she seems to be urging all sorts of extra details from the text. The sound is stupendous, Fleming's voice complemented by the Munich Orchestra, with Thielemann bringing out every detail in Strauss's nostalgic orchestration.

[Thielemann] gives her voice space to soar and swoop in its illimitable fashion, but refuses to indulge her much-discussed habit of dropping consonants half the time...this is a strikingly fretful interpretation that contemplates mortality with profound unease as well as resignation...Elsewhere, she gives a ravishing account of Verführung and the finest performance of Winterweihe I can think of.

[Fleming's] voice is perfectly suited to [these 'magical late songs'] demands, less of range than of tender, expressive feeling…a must for more than merely Straussians