Richard Strauss: Orchestral music

[Nick Armstrong]

Caliban
I was just about to endorse the Previn as I read your recommendation. The recording is superb as well.

It is! Glad someone else likes it!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I am already familiar with these works (Jessye Norman, Lucia Popp, Lisa Della Cassa).

All excellent performances (especially the Della Casa).

[jayne lee wilson]

The locus classicus of Strauss Orchestral recordings just HAS to be Rudolf Kempe with the glorious Dresden Staatskapelle. Not always the most spectacular, the warmth, character - that echt-Viennese idiomatic rightness - just HAS to be heard by anyone venturing into this repertoire.

There are all sorts of Boxes of it, but bear in mind the cheapest won't necessarily have the best balance, which is important in these tapings (mainly Lukaskirche 1970s). There's an EMI GROC of Heldenleben/Tod und Verk which is a great way in.

Reiner's Chicago SO series was one of the earliest and is still "right up there"... especially like his Heldenleben (what a climax!), Also Sprach, Quixote and Gentilhomme... like Kempe, Reiner is instinctive in his phrasing.

Dorati's Mercury recordings with Minneapolis SO are lovely too, the original CD had Juan/Tod und verk./Eulenspiegel/Rosenkavalier and it's a great listen - a complete Strauss concert, if not taped as such...

(**Kempe's 1960 Quixote/Eulenspiegel with the Berlin Phil on Testament is another winner...)

[Rolmill]

Happy to receive some recommendations for the tone poems or other works, most of which will no doubt be available on Qobuz.

I have the complete Kempe/Dresden set and agree with JLW - it is wonderful. I have always had a soft spot for the two horn concertos (written nearly 60 years apart!) - learnt via the legendary Brain recordings, but Pyatt is also very good and I even enjoy Damm's permanent soft-focus wobble for Kempe . Also, the symphonic wind pieces (serenade, suite and symphony) are worth exploring as they are less often performed but contain much charming music - the COE winds made a fine recording under Heinz Holliger for Philips in the early 1990s.

[Nick Armstrong]

I have always had a soft spot for the two horn concertos... I even enjoy Damm's permanent soft-focus wobble for Kempe

So do I ... especially in No. 2...

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

But which version?!!

Is that an invitation?

[ahinton]

At the risk of sounding pedantic and undermining the thrust of the posts here - which is the last thing that I, as a great admirer of Strauss, would wish to do - I should point out that he died not in 1945 but 1949, at the age of 85 and that his oboe concerto, Metamorphosen and Vier Letzte Lieder were all written after the close of WWII.

For goodness' sakes, JLW, do go get yourself a job as a critic! Readerships are ready and waiting for you, even though they do not yet know it!

[Mr Pee]

From Wikipedia:-

Metamorphosen

Strauss completed the composition of Metamorphosen, a work for 23 solo strings, in 1945. The title and inspiration for the work comes from a profoundly self-examining poem by Goethe, which Strauss had considered setting as a choral work. Generally regarded as one of the masterpieces of the string repertoire, Metamorphosen contains Strauss's most sustained outpouring of tragic emotion. Conceived and written during the blackest days of World War II, the piece expresses in music Strauss's mourning of, among other things, the destruction of German culture—including the bombing of every great opera house in the nation. At the end of the war, Strauss wrote in his private diary:

The most terrible period of human history is at an end, the twelve year reign of bestiality, ignorance and anti-culture under the greatest criminals, during which Germany's 2000 years of cultural evolution met its doom.

Metamorphosen is Strauss's requiem for those 2000 years.

[HighlandDougie]

While I would cheerfully consign most of Richard Strauss's orchestral oeuvre (songs excepted) to Room 101/the Burning Fiery Furnace/Dante's innermost circle of hell, I wouldn't want to be without Kempe's Don Quixote but the earlier 1958 Berlin Philharmonic recording (with Tortelier) rather than that from Dresden.

[Ferretfancy]

I already knew Till and Don Juan pretty well, but one great disc which led me to more Strauss was the old Decca recording of Aus Italien with the VPO and Klemens Krauss. He was very young when he wrote it, but in the first movement it already has one of those long Strauss melodies that you can never forget. After that came the same forces in Tod und Verklarung.
I discovered Don Quixote much later, and this was with Kempe. I naturally bought all those Dresden recordings, but his earlier Don with the BPO and Tortelier is even better, first discovered on an LP for 10 bob!
I've just noticed that Highland Dougie thinks the same, thanks Dougie!

[Mr Pee]

I would cheerfully consign most of Richard Strauss's orchestral oeuvre (songs excepted) to Room 101/the Burning Fiery Furnace/Dante's innermost circle of hell

Only if Bagpipes go first.......

[Petrushka]

JLW is spot on in choosing Rudolf Kempe's Dresden set. I bought each box of LP's when they were issued in the early 1970s and now have the lot on CD. Supplement this set with some of Karajan's recordings and you don't really need to get anyone else.

The very first classical concert I ever attended in May 1972 was given by the RPO and Rudolf Kempe and began with Strauss's Don Juan.

[Roehre]

Does another recording exist of the Japanische Festmusik opus 84 than Strauss' own 1941 (IIRC) one?
It's not included in any set, including Kempe's magnificent 4 multi-LP sets from the 1970s (now in one multi CD-set available), nor recorded by e.g. Chandos in their Strauss series.

[HighlandDougie]

Only if Bagpipes go first.......

I'm with you on that, Mr Pee (along with Scottish Country Dance Music, as played by Jimmy Shand et al)

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

JLW is spot on in choosing Rudolf Kempe's Dresden set. I bought each box of LP's when they were issued in the early 1970s and now have the lot on CD. Complement this set with [ ... ] Karajan's recordings and you don't really need to get anyone else.

The editorials express how I feel about this recorded repertoire, too. But Heldenlebens by Beecham (his first), Mengelberg and Barbirolli would join them (and Reiner and Szell did some excellent recordings, too).

The very first classical concert I ever attended in May 1972 was given by the RPO and Rudolf Kempe and began with Strauss's Don Juan.

To which the only response is a Pythonesque "You, lucky, lucky ... " What a start to a concert-going life!