Evans weaves a special magic in the dying falls, with magnificent breath control at the end of 'September'. Gold, though, goes to Nicky Spence and Roger Vignoles, making a remarkable statement of intent in the raptuorous 'Cacilie', with a special care with text and phrase and an ardour verging on the heroic...There’s both sensitivity and fearlessness in Spence’s upper register; three cheers to Hyperion.

Nicky Spence is superb. The voice has recently grown to encompass more heroic roles and we hear that in this selection, in the bright, lively tone and ringing top…He deals heroically with Strauss’s more outrageous demands and, perhaps more importantly, he has just the right interpretative keenness and enthusiasm to put a persuasive case for everything he sings here.

Spence's voice is extremely attractive: lyrical and full of expression, yet also with a bright, ringing top register, ideal for the demands of Strauss's vocal writing...Vignoles is of course magnificent throughout, but especially in an impassioned account of Cäcilie which, even for Strauss, has a particularly fiendish accompaniment!

The young Scots tenor is a communicative lieder singer. He begins with an impassioned Cäcilie — the best-known “tenor” song here — but goes on to explore less familiar territory. Vignoles, the mastermind behind this series, revels in Strauss’s lush piano writing in the postlude to Die Ulme zu Hirsau.

Strauss’s piano writing is already rich with orchestral colours, explored, relished, and teased out wonderfully by Vignoles. In these four last songs, Rebecca Evans matches him in that particular ardent introspection Strauss demands. Nicky Spence is abundant (Cäcilie), soaring (Wenn) and tender (An Sie). Three great performers. Lucky Strauss.