Richard Strauss Recordings

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...

I’m just not that strong a Richard Strauss fan. The only piece that truly pushes all my buttons is The Four Last Songs, which I have on an old Angel/EMI LP with Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and George Szell conducting the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra. Yeah, Don Juan is fun, and Also Sprach Zarathustra has that great opening statement, but I’d personally just rather put on something by Mahler.

I have had a bit of a love hate relationship with his music, being immediately attracted to Don, Till, Don Quixote,and Death and Transfiguration. I was repelled initially by the egoism in Heldenleben but now I’ve surrendered to its sheer genius (listen to Strauss lampooning his critics with the chirping piccolos, and then listen to the song in Meredith Wilson’s The Music Man for the town harpies that gossip about Marian The Librarian). These are Strauss greatest non Operatic Music, gorgeous Melodie’s, unbelievable orchestration, and real narrative power. The end of Don Quixote is as moving as anything in music, and the small vignettes along the way, such as the bleating sheep that the befuddled Don has mistaken for enemy soldiers, are exquisite.

Two works that I have never fully embraced are Alpine Symphony and Metamorphasen. The former has some superb music, such as the storm sequence, alternating with some second rate Strauss. Metamorphasen, written as the rubble of the Third Reich had not finished bouncing, perhaps for me is undone by its adherents, who make all sorts of claims about what great philosophical truth it contains. For me it’s overlong, although it does have some fine and moving passages, and for me a Strauss canvass without the color of a full Orchestra is like a Rembrandt woodcut-undoubtedly created by a Master but ultimately frustrating because we know what these artists can do with a full palette.

Zarathustra is a special case.  Inevitably the rest of it after the 2001 opening also seems anticlimactic.  It takes a lowering of expectations on the part of the listener and more than most of RS requires a Conductor to really shape it.  Haitink with the Concertgebouw gets a slight nod here over Reiner and Kempe.

The Domestic Symphony is beyond redemption 

As a sometimes listener of classical music, and one with no formal or even informal music training, for me to listen to a classical piece more than once, it has to speak to me in some, usually in a way that I cannot describe precisely. When asked why I might like a new piece of pop music, I’m the guy who says, “It’s cool.”  I was at a record store in the early 80s and a knowledgeable salesman recommended the “Vier letzte Lieder” with Elizabeth Schwarzkopf. I’ll never forget the first time I heard them. I have not listened to any other recordings of this, but Schwarzkopf sounds perfect, so in control, powerful, but not over the top. And who does not yearn for knowledgeable record store salesmen?

@rafevw -- Hey! That's the recording I mention above! Jus' gotta love it.

A favorite:

Richard Strauss - Lucia Popp • Klaus Tennstedt, London Philharmonic Orchestra* – Four Last Songs / Death And Transfiguration on EMI