I vouch for Lucia Popp too... Great Post... thanks
Richard Strauss Recordings
Strauss is one of a very few Composers who had equal success in both Opera and Symphonic realm. For the purpose of this discussion I am confining my discussion to non Opera, so essentially: Zarathustra, Till, Don Juan, Heldenleben, Eine Alpinesymphony, Death and Transfiguration, Rosenkavalier and Capriccio extracts, Metamophasen, the early works (Macbeth, Aus Italian) and the one that I really dislike—Symphonica Domestica.
Sine these are such great Orchestral showcases they have oft been recorded and many as large collections.
I’ve been listening through the Kempe set with the Dresden Staatkapelle recently (the latest reissue on Warner) from the early seventies and primarily comparing it with two sets -the Reiner/Chicago set, dating from the dawn of the stereo era (Zarathustra recorded-in stereo-in to 1954!) from it’s last Sony reissue, and the Karajan/Berlin Phil set from the early digital era.
The first observation here, this being an Audiophile Site, is the incredible quality of the first two sets. At no point, even with the Reiner recordings made before I was born, did I feel that I was listening to anything less than superb reproduction. It’s amazing how much digital replay has advanced, and how much information is in these old tapes. By contrast, the worse recording was the Karajan, as DG hadn’t figured out the new technology, and Von K. no doubt had a hand in twiddling the knobs at the mix. It’s over bright and pace any DG recording of the last third of the last century, lacking in bass and presence.
The Reiner and Kempe are superb collections. It’s a pity that Reiner never recorded the Alpine Symphony, and occasionally with Kempe one gets the feeling of being hemmed in by the bar lines, but those are relatively rare instances and the DSK of that vintage probably still had players who had been conducted by the Composer, who favored that Orchestra in his later years.
I have several other later Strauss recordings but probably it will be just Kempe and Reiner for me going forward
Showing 15 responses by mahgister
Another post of you where i recognize me... I used the logic of musical history for example to explain WHY Scriabin is a so much important composer, this does not mean that i am right for some other people with a different perspective nor that i am wrong either.. Sophist used logic as a tool and Plato came to explain to them, or to remind to some of them , because sophists were not all the same, to remind of them of Beauty, Truth, and the supreme good, about which any réthoric promotion will fail and any logic will not be enough: experience of beauty, truth and the supreme good is necessary... And the down fall of our civilization did not comme from logic or rethoric but from the impossibility to reconnect and experience our own roots anew... Philosopher as different as Chesterton, Cassirer or Goethe remind us of that...Materialism and scientism were ONLY thresholds humanity must have passed, but darker spiritual forces prolonged it an ARTIFICIAL way because they benefitted from it ... Why did technology so much dominate us but theoretical science and philosophy of nature is at a stall ? Because consciousness and the experience of consciousness is not understood in an EXPERIENTAL WAY , the great mathematicians Grothendieck and Alain Connes expressed it , one about God and the mathematical experience and the other about mathematics and time experience in physics... Whitehead after Goethe and Husserl in his "crisis of modern science" last book 90 years ago, described why the Cartesian dualism was a dead end a bifurcation as said Whitehead after him , a parting from our spiritual roots and experience of consciousness... The culmination of our civilization destruction is the new cult: transhumanism... i am optimist ONLY because i dont believe in death but only in the body decay... But others people in power fear death and the lost of their illusory power and push humanity in the wrong direction... These darker forces are not a new superstition, they exist all across the universe as life exist too...A.I. is not BORN ONLY on earth...Nor will be BORN on earth soon A.C. artificial consciousness...Other civilizations goes through the same Pandora box and felt the same HUBRIS promoted by Mephisto and described by the giant thinker Goethe ... I am a monist , where the ONE is the womb of an internal pluralities; dualities and polarities are expression of pure creativity and freedom but we are ONE...But we need conscious experience to go back to reality from spectral willed experiences... I spoke me too with "logic" which is only a tool but reality is an abyss or is love... Reality is freedom and is the two..We choose...
I love very much the "metamorphosen" piece of Strauss, because there, there is no more only beautiful music, here there is a consciousness thinking anew ...Here Strauss became more than what he was in the past and seat beside Bach...Truth supreme and the ONE through beauty and the Good and through death ... The "metamorphosen" are less a piece of beautiful music than an act of consciousness in the making before us and with us ... In a way as the "art of the fugue" is an act of musical thinking in the making before our eyes... Sometimes we must STOP comparison to understand and create truthful comparison over any competition race or taste... We must criticize and analyse and describe and feel any works of art going back to the roots where everything is ONE...It is what Strauss say here... We must abandon ourself to regain ourself... This is the thinking process i felth through this piece...Called " metamorphosis" very exactly describing the process of regaining consciousness through thinking as Vivaldi described the 4 seasons, or Bach the musical process, or Beethoven the irrepressible impossible to stop ONE joy or as Sciabin describe the abyss of freedom...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlpNB0WeQaQ
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Very beautiful and moving story ... Thanks very much edcyn... Indeed even if Stravinsky never moved my heart, i perfectly understand his genius which is indeed without peer...And as i made it clear, we are all different and the way we enter into contact with Music differ and did not do the same effect on each of us... My musical life changed at 13 years old, i was gifted by a transistor small radio and i was listening the songs of the era in the night hidden under my blanket with small cheap IEM... Then in the college, the teacher taught us about Bach putting Brandenburg concertos on a small turntable connected to two speakers used for this course... I entered in some ectasy right on the spot without even knowing what it was i felt and why i felt it and how...I was under a shock as someone seeing angels without recognizing them as such...I discovered THINKING in the silent walking alone right after the music course... I did not even know at the time the detph where i had been touch : the PERFECT HARMONY EXIST...The absolute may exist... Etc... It was like "number theory" when the very young Ramanujan stumbled by chance on an English mathemathical book from the English Masters of India... But alas! i was not a genius myself...But i could understand how can someone feel in the discovery of a revelation... After that, music stayed in my obsession, and we were very poor, but i keep my money and buy my first stereo...I rediscovered Bach and entered in some new ectasy listening Josquin Des Prez, Missa Pange Lingua , i was 16... As you see nobody live the same life , and why some music touch us and why the Beatles i listened to as the others never touched me really even if i could appreciate them is a mystery of my individuality...As your Stravinski ectasy who change the way you consider music and life...I started a thread here about the fact that i appreciate Miles Davis a lot but i was more touched by Chet Baker, i did not really understand why even if i can justifying it more than explaining it in a way... It is not logical...
We are all an abyss wrapped in a cosmos and at the same time a cosmos wrapped in an abyss... There exist projective varieties based on a point at infinity and another set of varieties based on a plane at infinity... Mysteries inside mysteries indeed... 😊
« Sorry,too much projective geometry»-Groucho Marx 🤓
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I feel the same as you...
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Great post and i appreciate your posts a lot... It is less the "wrong note" as a stylizing systematic posture of supreme mastery which is not so easily decipherable as a set of "wrong notes" at all but i get the point.... The reason why Stravinski dont moved the heart but amaze the musical grammar master brain in us...If it was always the "wrong notes" he will not be the giant he is... And Klemperer was a so great Maestro that even when it seems wrong his interpretation are indispensable and never surpassed being only alternative stupendous interpretation of their own...I love Klemperer... But his direction is supremely aimed to a truth OVER any chosen composer real intention ( save in Bach where Klemperer meet his fellow soul )...It remind me of Celibidache direction who also direct anything aiming at a higher truth over any composer intention ... The two are masters of timing quiet contrasted orchestral mass hold in some mysterious equilibrium ... The Klemperer interpretation of Bach great mass rival in slow timing, with nothing falling apart, even Celibidache irrational or supra rational timing mastery... Then K. could not love Strauss with the highest love...He was too "serious" deep man suffering from disease all his life to be moved only by seductive beauty without truth...He directed modern composers Schonberg too as you already know...
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Ah! a very creative mind...It remind me of his "penguin in bondage song" when i listened to it when i was 20 years old i think without appreciating it because i was immature compared to my initiating friend... this event haunted me till this day... And this initiating friend is alive and always a friend.. Thanks
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Thanks for your interesting post and i like the last sentence a lot... As for Stravinski, i prefer with the mother of young Stravinski if the anecdote is true Scriabin music .. 😊 Stravinski is the most gifted composer i can think about in the two wars period, i appreciated it for sure but in casual listening...He did not change my life... Scriabin at first listening played by Sofronitsky did in two minutes poem , i realized listening to him that i never understood music in all his depth , as Bach, Josquin Des Prez or Bruckner did among few others... For each one of us, life perspective are different... i feel greatly the Promethean impulse to free humanity in Scriabin as i felt it in Beethoven, and stay cold most of the times to the supreme total Stravinski mastery of all aspects of music stylistic... Nobody can claim that Stavinski is not a musical absolute genius to be clear... The part of Stravinski i prefer are his religious works...Because i like choral music too much... My very best...
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Adorno so intelligent it was, as Ansermet was at the opposite end, a very learned and intelligent man and even if i do not partake his catechism about tonality, a way more deeper thinker than Adorno ( i read his mammoth book) They have their clear agendas each one of them ...
And reality had not wait for our agendas... And as i said FREEDOM come right at the same moment through Jazz first or composers as different as Charles Ives or Scriabin for example who cannot be put against Schoenberg as mere neo-classicism reaction .. Then came into the fore right after Jazz , all worlds music "classical" traditions...As in iranian/persian music and Indian classical music among all others.. The first mentor and friend of Philip Glass creating minimalism with other composers , studied american Indian drumming for example... Adorno was very european centric , and did not understand what is coming in his times , which was FREEDOM , but not in dogmatic atonal dogma AGAINST tonality , ( after all any two foes ressemble each other way more than suggested by their apparent opposition, Atonality is only the reverse of tonality, two faces of the same coin)... Adorno did not understood Jazz as music phenomenon and his analysis is not even wrong but being socially focused beside the musical essential meaningful emerging point... « Adorno’s essay “On Jazz” of 1936 sees jazz as a commodity in the culture industry and as merely a perverted form of symbolic revolt against social injustice.» And my Biblical metaphor about exile in the desert is spot on, i take it inspired by Ansermet who despise Schoenberg atonality...But unlike Ansermet catechism it was not a return to tonality dogma which came after the war but because of new technologies the world "classical" musics from all world corners... The occidental domination centered in European christian values were already contested by musical traditions which appear as revelations for many of us...Personnally i admired mid eastern music and Iranian and Indian classicals especially... But even didgeridoo australian music can taught us something... Sound is music by the power of the human brain/body/consciousness... But music in the larger possible meaning of the world , out of humanity, is at the core of mathemathics and then of the cosmos...Music is more than human leisure in esthetic or dogmatic truth... Music is medecine and cosmology and number theory...The greatest thinker in music right now is the creator of non commutative geometry : Alain Connes ...This is one of the deepest lecture in Science i ever heard.., it must be listened to many times.. But it is stunning.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z52ZAPrRbqE&t=487s
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I said the same thing about Strauss, he expressed himself through esthetics over truth ethic, but you said it way more precisely and way better than i did...Thanks... Save i dont judge him as harsh as you only because he stay behind the revolution coming in music... This revolution of atonal music , was more a temporary exile from past esthetics endeavour and a stay in the desert waiting for some truth and looking for it over the past esthetics... But paradoxically Schoenberg reject all past esthethics looking for truth with a new esthetic...I prefer Scriabin even over Berg who enter himself consciously in the abyss between tonality and atonality and stay conscious on their border...This is the reason why he is so revered in Russia way less so in the rest of the world... For me Stravinski is like a super-Strauss...Someone i can appreciated and put over every modern composer by his genius but Stravinski never touch this part of my soul and heart looking for truth... As Strauss did sometimes as you yourself put it in your post...Scriabin is not if we listen all his journey from saturated romanticism to extra terrestrial or deep spiritual expressions a reactionary... He moved us and at the same time created new worlds with minimal means.. But from this passing in the desert of atonality , musicians discovered freedom at the end, and truth became not a new dogma or a past catechism but the discoveries of all earth musical traditions,oriental and the others and jazz as a true valued musical forms on their own among other values... Philip Glass is an example of this... They are many others like Arvo Paart... Or Robert Simson... Even if he can be perceived as a reactionary , Ernest Ansermet taught something peculiar about tonality history and very central : truth must be put over esthetics... For sure the future was not to be in the Ansermet deep diktat , the future was freedom at last from all captivity, even from the truth jail... History of music is in a way an history of human consciousness but not in a linear historical way as Ansermet depicted it in his mammoth book confusing european music with all music... Thanks very much for this interesting post....
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Strauss is so loved that movies used some of his orchestra pieces almost as often as Vivaldi... But the way he used voices is for me the deal... And i will go for Reiner recording for sound quality, there is a 63 cd box i am curious about... But some of my favorite musical ectasy are not well recorded at all...😁 Truly more less unrecognized geniuses are more for me like Scriabin or Gesualdo, or Robert Simpson...
Our "unconditional" love for a composer can only go to a composer who is way more than a genius only... It must be for humanity as a whole as Bach certainly was, a revelation, for each one of us, and in particular as Bible for musicians... Bach is that, as only very few other composers could be who reveal to us unrecognized aspects of music on a spiritual side...But these others are matter of personal experiences and we will differ for our choices... Josquin des Prez or Scriabin and before him Bruckner was revelatories changing life experiences for me...At some revelatory times in my life... But it was never the esthetic dimensions alone that awake me ultimately in a composer , but the ethical truth revelation over the rethorical means and through the esthetical but over it... If i was more gifted as a musician and i am not, i could perhaps be more sensible to the pure esthetical aspect of all musicians... But i dont read music nor play music... Each musical event is for me a seeing through the veil more than a sensual event...It is the reason why i love so much jazz, it is because the sensual and sensible living dimension of my body is there in a way it cannot be there in the three hours Christus Liszt... it is also the reason why through a completely different ESTHETICAL doors, i love so much Iranian or Indian or Chinese or Japan music or middle eastern one... Here esthetic aspect, as new and complete ly different new roads, reveal a new way to ultimate truth...
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I must say for me too that this recording is one of the most beautiful songs ever recorded... And it is the same for his operas... I think Bach is all truth ethic over beauty....This comes from his mathemathical insight...Beauty comes from truth and from ethics ... I think Bruckner is well balanced between truth and ethic and sensual beauty as Beethoven was in his own way... Compared to Strauss.... But all that are mere description of my feelings not criticism... Strauss is insanely gifted in colors mastery... He remind me of the colors mastery of Monteverdi...In Monteverdi too, beauty and esthetic win always... And thinking about that, it is very instructive to think about the works of Liszt from pure esthetics and beauty in the beginning toward maturity and over toward absolute truth controlling every inch of colors and beauty in his Christus which orchestral lonng opening describe heaven for me ...A work so underestimated it is a shame... Bruckner take a lot from it, and this mastery control of beauty under the hand of truth and ethic...
I think the OP is right, it is very difficult to look for a composer who exhibit the same supreme mastery in orchestration and all dimensions of voices masteries... On par with Strauss i will put the great Monteverdi...The two use saturated colors over melodic line... In now feel the urgent need to listen to the Metamorphosen with Reiner.... Thanks OP...
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I think frogman put it right.... Too much estheticism exhuding through all holes , and lack of self control ethical perspective... Beauty over truth... But my description is only a description not a critic at all, Strauss is an incredible genius and a master of the voice and orchestra as frogman said too .... One of the true great composers... |