Richard Strauss - Complete Tone Poems Vol.1

Richard STRAUSS (1864-1949)

Complete Tone Poems Vol 1

Ein Heldenleben, Op 40 

Tod und Verklärung, Op 24 

SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden und Freiburg

François-Xavier Roth

rec. 2012-2015, Freiburg, Germany

Review:

Franz Liszt started it with his ‘Symphonische Dichtungen’, otherwise known as ‘Symphonic Poems’. Richard Strauss had the same interest in programme music, but used the term ‘Ton Dichtungen’. That phrase – bear with me - has been translated time and again into English as ‘Tone Poems’; but that is of course completely wrong. The German word ‘Ton’ means ‘sound’, whereas the English word ‘tone’ has, in a musical context, three meanings: a single musical sound; the timbre or colour of an instrument or voice; and the distance of a step of two semitones from one note to another, e.g. C to D. Join me in my campaign for a better translation, which would be very simple: ‘Sound Poems’ – et voilá!

These ‘sound poems’, then, were written during a substantial chunk of Strauss’s career, from Aus Italien of 1886 through to the Alpine Symphony of 1915. Then – he stopped and never wrote another one. In fact, Strauss composed almost no purely orchestral music after 1915 until his ‘Indian Summer’ (roughly 1942-49), with pieces including the Oboe Concerto, the 2nd Horn Concerto, and Metamorphosen (which itself appears on CD5). In between times, he concentrated on opera, and was, to say the least, also rather busy with his Directorship of the Vienna Opera from 1919 until 1924.

The French conductor François-Xavier Roth was chief conductor of the SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden und Freiburg (now mercifully just SWR Sinfonieorchester!) from 2011 – 2016, and in that period, his work conducting concert performances and recordings of Strauss orchestral works was a major project. Now we have them for the first time boxed all together under the orchestra’s own SWR Classic label, making it possible to see what an impressive achievement this is.

There is no doubt that the SWR orchestra is one of the finest in Germany – world-class in fact – with a pedigree going back nearly sixty years, and music directors including such major figures as Hans Rosbaud and Michael Gielen. You need a virtuoso orchestra to do full justice to this music, and that is exactly what you get in this collection.

The works themselves; well, they’re a mixed bag. The early ones, from Don Juan of 1888 to Till Eulenspiegel of 1895, are magnificent examples of their kind, and showcase Strauss’s brilliant deployment of his orchestral forces. By this time, he was already becoming famous as a conductor, and has since been recognised as one of the greatest of all orchestrators, along perhaps with Berlioz and Ravel. But although his orchestral skill remained intact, the later sound poems became prolix and too lengthy, while the ‘private life’ episodes in Symphonia Domestica are just a touch embarrassing – bathing the baby, for heaven’s sake!

Getting all these big-boned works onto just five CDs was a challenge, which is why there is no kind of consistent time-line here, though it was absolutely the right decision to leave Metamorphosen – not a ‘tone poem’ at all of course - to the very end of CD5, giving it the feeling of an epilogue to the whole set.

CD1, then, has two recordings from 2012, Ein Heldenleben (A Hero’s Life) and the earlier Tod und Verklärung (Death and Transfiguration). The first is a large-scale piece divided into six sections. These are separately tracked, which is helpful, though the titles of each section are in German. (Given that the booklet notes are translated into English, surely it wouldn’t have been too much trouble also to translate movement titles? In descriptive works such as these, it really does matter).

Ein Heldenleben could be described as a tongue-in-cheek spectacular. It takes a ‘hero’ (i.e. the composer himself, we soon discover) and charts his rise to glory. Having witnessed the defeat of his carping critics in a massive pitch battle, we are then treated to The Hero’s Works of Peace (a pot-pourri featuring snatches of earlier works), a final brush with the critics, and a concluding love-duet between Mr. and Mrs. Strauss (horn and violin). Anyone who believes this is straight self-aggrandisement doesn’t know Strauss’s personality and his strong sense of humour, and indeed is not listening closely enough to the music itself. There is plenty of entertaining characterisation here, both of those sharp-tongued critics (woodwind confusion, consecutive fifths in the tubas) and his feisty wife Pauline (violin cadenza). The section recalling earlier works is frankly tiresome, even to this Strauss lover, its only virtue being the opportunity for ‘spot-the-tune’. But the ending of the work is as cathartic as Strauss intended.

Roth, as in all these performances, is disciplined and controlled, while still giving the orchestra its head in the big moments. Yes - sometimes I did yearn for the sheer thick-carpeted luxury of the Berlin Philharmonic strings in the old Karajan recording (DG); but Roth’s clear sense of purpose won me over. Karajan’s most maddening fault was his occasional loss of a sense of the basic pulse of the music, a fundamental musical principle which he often ignores, particularly in slow music. Roth never does that, and is much the better for it.

That sense of purpose, and the momentum it brings, is much in evidence in Tod und Verklärung too. Though some ten years earlier than Ein Heldenleben, this is, for me, a far more serious and greater composition. It depicts – uncomfortably graphically in places – the struggles of a dying man, as he clings on to life, and re-lives his earlier life experiences. He dies, and begins his transfiguration and ascent to a higher plane. Strauss was of course famously atheist, and this is about as close as he came to writing a religious work.

This is, I think, the finest performance of all in this boxed set. Tod und Verklärung is arguably the most difficult of all Strauss’s orchestral works. It is incredibly demanding technically for every section of the orchestra, and has so many fluctuations of tempo and mood that need to be navigated with total commitment and sureness by the conductor. Roth supplies that, and by the end, I felt the whole arc of the work had been beautifully drawn.

                                                                

Extract from  Music Web  review of the comple 5 CDs Set