Music to my ears

I have recently come back to Strauss’s Four Last Songs, sung by Jessye Norman with the Leipzig Gewandhaus orchestra under Kurt Masur. When this recording was made, East Germany, where I’m from, was a very isolated world, into which came Norman, a black singer from the US with her incredible ability to sing long legato lines. The orchestra must have been in awe of her, while she was probably inspired by the modest, simple way they played Strauss. This idea of cultural exchange is one of the great things that music can bring.