R. Strauss: Eine Alpensinfonie

Intended for the army by his father, Johann – the founder of the waltz dynasty – Josef Strauss instead turned first to engineering and then, in a glittering career from 1856 until his premature death in 1870, to full-time composition and conducting. Josef was especially enamored of the music of Offenbach whose operettas and operas traveled successfully from the Parisian stage to Vienna. It was Josef’s custom to take the most attractive and suitable motifs from Offenbach’s stage works and fashion them into quadrilles, works performed to huge acclaim by his virtuoso orchestra.

An der schönen blauen Donau: Walzer und Polkas der Strauss-F

Opera Arias (Soprano): Tomowa-Sintow, Anna - TCHAIKOVSKY, P.

Opera Arias (Soprano): Cebotari, Maria - MOZART, W.A. / PUCC

Opera Arias (Tenor): Rosvaenge, Helge - PUCCINI, G. / WEBER,

Strauss, R.: Salome [Opera]

SILVESTERKONZERT

Strauss II: Waltzes

Vocal Recital: Kuhse, Hannelore - WAGNER, R. / STRAUSS, R. /

OPERETTA MELODIES - STRAUSS II, J. / MILLOCKER, C. / KALMAN,

As a great fan of Jessye Norman's first recording of Richard Strauss' Four Last Songs, I can say without impugnity that this brand new version is as fine, and can be seen as the anti-Norman at the same time. Where Norman lingers (and lingers, and lingers), pouring out buckets of lavish, dark tone and dizzying us with the finality of both the vision and the composer's biography, Soile Isokoski, with her infinitely brighter tone is accepting and loving, and her final song is the epitome of simple peace. Indeed, the four-song cycle clearly aims in that direction, but it is more often chock-filled with a sentimentality that, while not entirely unwelcome, in essence is unnecessary given the lushness of the music. Isokoski's reserve is almost religious in the purest sense of the word--there's faith written all over the four steps of the four songs. And needless to say, she has the technique to carry Strauss' long lines upward and back downward with ease, and her sound is beautiful.

The other 11 songs on the CD are similarly well thought through and performed. Most of the tempos she and Marek Janowski opt for are quick, and the decisions are wise and all of a piece: Even in the endlessly recorded Zueignung, the final "Habe dank!" is not deep and heavy--it's glorious. The Three Kings song comes across as a simple, lovely tale, told with clarity and directness; the Wiegenlied is a lullaby of gratefulness. Three Brentano songs, all filled with nature and flowers, are handsomely put forward, with the Rundfunk Sinfonieorchester Berlin's accompaniments clear and clean, woodwinds ideally played, and Ondine's engineers capturing every nuance in Strauss' orchestration without unnaturally underlining any one of them. I can't praise this beautiful release enough. Despite the many wonderful versions of the Four Last Songs (and many of the others) by singers as diverse and great as Norman, Schwarzkopf, and Janowitz, no lover of Strauss' songs or of great, elegant, un-prima-donna-ish singing should be without Isokoski's. [3/24/2002]

--Robert Levine, ClassicsToday.com

Classical Music

Singer Asmik Grigorian has chosen to record both versions of Richard Strauss's ultimate masterpiece, composed in 1948: the version with orchestra and the much rarer version with piano. For her, this work is associated with the idea of solitude, but not an unhappy solitude, rather a journey towards infinity: "Now all my senses long to sink into slumber. And the soul, unguarded, longs to soar up in freedom, so that, in night's magic circle, it may live deeply and a thousandfold." writes Hermann Hesse in Beim Schlafengehen (Going to Sleep), the third song in the cycle. For this unique coupling, Asmik is joined by two long-time accomplices: conductor Mikko Franck, with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, and pianist Markus Hinterhauser, artistic director of the Salzburg Festival. The combination of the two versions opens up new sensations: after the well-known abundance of Strauss's orchestration an incredible sensitivity is revealed by the piano version.

Is the imitation of rolling thunder, howling winds and bleating sheep a form of musical composition worthy of the name? Can we take seriously a composer who boasts of being able to 'set a restaurant menu to music, if need be'? These were the kinds of questions that Richard Strauss, one of the most virtuosic composers of the so-called 'programme music', had to ask himself. His answer: 'I am a musician from head to toe; for me, all "programmes" are merely incentives to invent new forms, nothing else.' The NDR Orchestra, conducted by Krzysztof Urbanski, has chosen to devote it's sixth Alpha Classics recording to three of Richard Strauss's most famous symphonic poems: Also sprach Zarathustra op. 30, Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche op. 28 and Don Juan op. 20.