Classical Music

Soon after the end of the Second World War, works by Richard Strauss were taken back into the repertoire of the Dresden State Opera. As early as 1945 the provisional venue of the Tonhalle (later the “Kleines Haus”, the small auditorium of the Staatstheater) was the location for a new staging of Ariadne auf Naxos and at the same place in 1946, another sign of restitution was seen in the revival of Die schweigsame Frau, which had lasted for only a few performances after the premiere in 1935 on account of the Jewish origins of writer and librettist Stefan Zweig. The following year was memorable for the legendary 1947 staging of Salome in Kurhaus Bühlau. 1948 brought a new production of Rosenkavalier in the new and larger Staatstheater auditorium known as the “Grosses Haus”. At all these Strauss operas from 1945 to 1948, General Music Director Joseph Keilberth was in overall charge of the music. Subsequent to Keilberth’s departure, the next new Strauss production was directed by newly appointed GMD Rudolf Kempe: Daphne on June 11, 1950, the source of the performance to be heard on this album (a live recording of the broadcast that day by the Dresden station of Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk).

It took many hours of rehearsal for the Weimar Orchestra to get its lips and fingers around Richard Strauss’s tone poem "Don Juan" in the Autumn of 1889, even with the benefit of the composer himself in charge. Not much about this music was conventional. Certainly not its opening page. The piece launches, off the beat, with an elusive upward flourish metamorphosing into a string of motifs that spans more than three octaves. It is the libertine Don Juan leaping out in front of us, and the 25-year-old Strauss introducing himself to the world with the piece that would make his name.

-----

REVIEWS:

It showcases three of the composer’s most vividly pictorial works in performances shot through with the same sense of discovery and flexibility, and of conductor and orchestra thoroughly enjoying themselves. Tuck's playing is beautifully integrated and superbly eloquent. But it’s largely Petrenko’s conviction that makes the performance so special, with no bar allowed simply to play itself, the music’s descriptiveness vividly but never doggedly conveyed.

– Gramophone

The lunatic, the lover, and the joker are of imagination all infinite in these supremely vivid interpretations. Petrenko takes his time over the first unravelling of the melancholy knight’s wits. A shame the Oslo Philharmonic viola isn’t credited: this is the most golden tone I’ve heard for Sancho’s garrulousness. For this trio, there’s no better recommendation right now.

– BBC Music Magazine

This new release features three orchestral works by Richard Strauss written when he was a young man. His brilliance can already be heard in these early pieces, and these pieces have been far too rarely recorded. Grigorios Zamparas has received critical acclaim for his versatile performing career as recitalist, orchestra soloist and chamber musician in Greece, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, former Yugoslavia, Russia, and the US. He is a frequent guest at numerous festivals worldwide, having performed several times at the prestigious Newport Music Festival, the Mainly Mozart Festival, among others. He is joined here by the Bohuslav Martinu Philharmonic Orchestra with Jon Ceander Mitchell at the helm.

Classical Music

Classical Music

During the mid 18th century, there was a popular genre of painting called the capriccio. It featured imaginary topographical scenes in which various elemnts, largely architectural, were brought together as never possible in real life. They offered dazzling views and set the imagination in a spin. Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier is the operatic equivalent, for in its recreation of ‘the old Vienna under the Empress Maria Theresia- the very period in which the genre of the capriccio flourished- it juxtaposes seemingly distinct elements, such as 18th-century social conventions, 19th century waltzes and 20th century thinking. Following Hofmannsthal’s lead, Strauss constantly switches between the lyrically symphonic and the downright bawdy in the opera. “Marc Albrecht, once again presented his platinum Strauss credentials… The Netherlands Philharmonic, playing with dreamline ease, tugged at the heart with airborne woodwinds and shapely violin lines, stopping a hair’s breadth away from full extravagance. This introspective restraint created a tenseness throughout, rendering the emotional climzxes all the more powerful.” (bachtrack.com)

Classical Music

Classical Music

Recorded in: Danish Radio Concert Hall, Copenhagen 18-23 & 25-29 August 1997 Sound Engineer(s) Jørn Jacobsen Producer(s) Brian Couzens Executive Claus Due

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

The music of "Don Juan", which Richard Strauss rightly called a "tone poen", is of a double nature: it can just as well be heard as an effervescent and enraptured tour de force of a creative temperament which has found itself or as the depiction of various episodes. In "Macbeth" it is not the Shakespeare drama which Richard Strauss reproduces here, but rather its essence: a psychogram of the two protagonists in musical terms, a psychic profile of the Scottish nobleman turned criminal usurper and his spouse who ensnares him and spurs him on. Despite of the manyfold commentaries and philosophical interpretations of "Also sprach Zarathustra" (Thus spake Zarathustra), however, this much is certain that Strauss did not try to set a philosophical system to music. Nevertheless, there is also no doubt that he undertook the task - inspired by intensive study of Nietzsche - of singing the praises of a "superhuman" being in the sense of a spiritual creature conscious of itself and freed of all earthly traces.

Those fortunate enough to attend Glyndebourne know how well Felicity Lott sings operatic Strauss, so it is particularly pleasing that wider and larger audiences enjoy her outstanding performance of the Four Last songs and can now have it on record. . . . [T]he songs are sung in the order of the 1950 first performance, with ''Beim schlafengehen'' first . . . . Emotionally this seems to me an improvement on the published sequence. Lott's radiant singing reminds me of Sena Jurinac in this music. It has a comparable glistening purity and brightness of tone. Her diction is immaculate and the sheer rapture of her phrasing—in a line like ''Sommer lachelt erstaunt'' and especially her profoundly moving delivery of ''So tief im Abendrot'' in the final song—is glorious to hear. The orchestral playing is luminous and rich in detail. -- Gramophone