The 150th birthday of Richard Strauss will be celebrated next year. On this occasion OehmsClassics is initiating a series with the tone poems of Richard Strauss with the Frankfurt Museum Orchestra and General Music Director, Sebastian Weigle. The first of these is Ein Heldenleben (A Hero's Life) which was premiered in 1899 by this very same orchestra under the direction of the composer. The CD is supplemented by the less frequently performed MacBeth.

Richard Strauss made an auspicious, threefold debut on 18 Oct 1885, age 21: as soloist in Mozart's Piano Concerto in c, K. 491, and as composer and conductor with his own Symphony in f, op. 12. "Symphony - splendid. His playing - like his conducting debut - simply astounding" was but one reaction. Despite this spectacular success, Strauss only achieved his definitive breakthrough as a composer with Don Juan, Op. 20 in 1888, a work revealing a completely new approach to instrumentation. These are the two works that feature on Vol. 3 of Sebastian Weigle's Richard Strauss orchestral series.

This Brigitte Fassbaender-directed Ariadne auf Naxos, Richard Strauss' 1916 opera based on a Hugo von Hofmannsthal libretto, is the third release from Frankfurt Opera to feature on OehmsClassics. "Scenically and musically brilliant" and "sparkling spirit and level-headed heartiness", is how the Frankfurter Rundschau of 7 October 2013 described the premiere evening. Sebastian Weigle, an experienced and outstanding Strauss conductor lead a cast that stars Camilla Nylund as Ariadne, Brenda Rae as Zerbinetta, Michael K�nig as the Tenor and Claudia Mahnke as the Composer.

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Richard Strauss’s An Alpine Symphony, Op. 64, while labeled as a symphony by the composer, is a tone poem which forgoes the traditional form of the multi-movement symphony and is made up of twenty-two continuous portions of music. This is Strauss’s largest scale non-operatic work, calling for 125 performers in all. Strauss was inspired to write this work after he lost his way heading up a mountain in a storm. The work in its entirety was completed in 1915, and dedicated to Count Nicolaus Seebach, director of the Royal Opera in Dresden. Conductor Sebastian Weigle has an impressive list of accomplishments to his name- founding the “Berliner Blaserquintett,” artistic director of the “Kammerchor Berlin,” “Professor of French Horn at the Universitat der Kunste Berlin, and now the General Music Director of the Oper Frankfurt. His previous recordings with the ensemble have gained him critical recognition.

Richard Strauss’ Metamorphoses for 23 solo strings, his last great orchestral work, was given its premiere on 25 January 1946 in Zürich, Switzerland under the direction of the work’s dedicatee, the eminent Swiss musician Paul Sacher (1906-99). + Here, the conductor Eugen Jochum (1902-87) conducts the dynamic Bavarian Radio Symphony, the orchestra he helped found. + The Concerto for Oboe in D, also one of the composer‘s late works, received its premiere a mere one month after Metamorphoses, also in Zürich. + The performers here are once again the BRSO and their solo oboist Stefan Schilli.

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This disc was nominated for the 2000 Gramophone magazine award for "Best
Recital Recording."
The enthralling singer-actress Julia Varady has remarked that "as a singer one must consider Richard Strauss as bel canto." This pronouncement raises the expectation that upon listening to this recording of Varady singing excerpts from four Strauss operas one will hear both long connected melodic line and a variety of carefully modulated vocal colors-hallmarks of the "beautiful singing" of the 19th century.
After a careful glance at the demanding music she has selected to perform here, her statement would be wishful thinking for most dramatic sopranos. But Varady is no run-of-the-mill soprano. Indeed, the singing on this recording is both dramatically compelling and terribly beautiful. Her Salome is both disturbing and beguilingly youthful, while her Ariadne has a tragic heft befitting her plight. The opening Ariadne's "Es gibt ein Reich" sails on one long breath. While Varady always declaims the text clearly, she avoids any preciousness of declamation that would interrupt her vocal line.
Varady's partner on the conducting podium is also her partner in life--the legendary baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. Sharing so many of the same vocal virtues, one can only hope that they are as ideally suited in married life as they clearly are in musical collaboration.

Ondine is pleased to announce the new release of legendary Strauss-singer Soile Isokoski. A multiple award-winner, her recording of Strauss Four Last Songs won a Gramophone Award in 2002. The rarely recorded Three Hymns are coupled with opera arias from Ariadne auf Naxos, Der Rosenkavalier and Capriccio. All of those arias are part of Soile Isokoski's standard repertoire, performing those roles regularly at opera houses like Vienna State Opera, Covent Garden, and Milan’s La Scala.

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Live recording: Festspielhaus, July 29/30, 1958

Lisa Della Casa and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau - this was an ideally cast Arabella with a dream couple in the leading roles. For years this production was a model for Munich and Vienna. It can now be heard for the first time in its original version, with the incomparable Strauss sound of the Vienna Philharmonic under Joseph Keilberth - the sensation of the 1958 Salzburg Festival.

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