The Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and conductor Nicholas Collon present a new album of orchestral works by Richard Strauss. The program includes Strauss’s longest and final major orchestral work, the Alpine Symphony together with Four Songs, Op. 27 sung by Louise Alder, the star British soprano who made her Met debut this fall in Strauss’s Arabella. Strauss composed more than 200 songs, many with his wife’s soprano voice in mind. His four songs Opus 27 are particularly intimate: Strauss presented them to his wife Pauline de Ahna as a wedding gift upon their marriage in September 1894. From these songs, Strauss composed “Cäcilie” in the evening of 9th September, the day before his marriage to Pauline. These four songs on love are lavishly orchestrated and Strauss returned to orchestrate these songs still half a century later, in the 1940s.