Strauss: Also Sprach Zarathustra, Tod Und Verklärung, Till Eulenspiegel & Salome's Dance

Following critical acclaim for their world premiere recording of Stravinsky’s Funeral Song, the Lucerne Festival Orchestra and Riccardo Chailly return with a new collaboration featuring some of the greatest works in the orchestral repertoire by Richard Strauss, including Also sprach Zarathustra and Till Eulenspiegel, recorded live at the opening concert of the Lucerne Festival, 2017.

This Blu-ray disc features rising star conductor Andris Nelsons leading the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in a program of popular Richard Strauss orchestral works: Till Eulenspiegel, Macbeth and Also Sprach Zarathustra. Andris Nelsons is one of todays most sought-after young conductors, having worked with the worlds most important orchestras including the Berlin, Vienna, New York, Royal Concertgebouw and Philharmonia Orchestras. He is a regular guest at Covent Garden, the MET, Wiener and Deutsche Staatsoper and at Bayreuth.

Steinberg's tenure at the helm of the Boston Symphony was cut short by illness, but his relatively slim catalogue of recordings with the orchestra produced several important examples of his art, boasting truly fine interpretations and spectacular playing. These orchestral showpieces by Strauss and Holst were long overdue for reissue. Steinberg's fast tempos make the Strauss work zip by; it's as if he takes it in one big gulp, creating as exciting a performance as you're likely to hear.

Järvi’s version of Zarathustra strikes me as one of the finest ever, a recording to stand alongside those of Reiner, Karajan and Previn. The performance of the opening ‘Sunrise’ makes such an impact that I initially wondered whether the rest of the piece might sound anticlimactic in comparison, but Järvi sustains the intensity through to the end…. The eloquence of the orchestra’s strings also makes a strong impression in Metamorphosen…

This is a marvel. Save for a needlessly patronizing booklet-note, and for some unexpectedly poor brass tuning at a climactic point of DEATH AND TRANSFIGURATION (the third of this disc's pieces), it would be flawless. While Dohnanyi fortunately takes his time over all these tone-poems (METAMORPHOSEN becomes insufferable if its conductor permits any suggestion of impatience), he never drags. Rather, one simply feels - as so often with, say, Solti's interpretations - that details (for instance, some string counterpoint in DON JUAN which most conductors couldn't be bothered to clarify) have been made freshly audible, thanks to the VPO's fierce virtuosity and to its helmsman's long-range vision of the music.

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 Urbański, has chosen to devote its 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.