Falletta Strauss

Richard Strauss’ Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme suite was one of his own favourite scores, an absolute jewel of incidental music that combines the composer’s romanticism with his love of the Baroque music of Jean-Baptiste Lully. D. Wilson Ochoa has created a new symphonic orchestral suite from Strauss’ opulent Ariadne auf Naxos, enabling the orchestra to revel in music of extreme beauty and sensuous luxury, studded with gorgeous instrumental solos and the composer’s incomparable blend of poignancy, humour and melodic richness.

Richard Strauss’s single-act ballet Josephs Legende emerged in 1914 just as the world’s attention was turning to war. But with its exotic instrumental colouring and the composer’s intent to rejuvenate dance into a ‘purely inspirational form’ dedicated to ‘absolute beauty’, it reveals a great ballet composer and demonstrates his orchestral mastery to the full. Josephs Legende is a parable about struggles between good and evil based on the familiar Old Testament story of the slave boy Joseph. The work’s dramatic tale is set with alluring sensuality expressed through Strauss’s gift for soaring themes. Not many associate Richard Strauss with the world of ballet, and Josephs Legende is one of his less well-known orchestral scores. There are a few recordings around, and our recording of the orchestral suite with the Buffalo Philharmonic conducted by JoAnn Falletta (8.572041), was considered ‘utterly glorious’ in MusicWeb International, but this work has long been overshadowed by the popularity of Strauss’s other stage and orchestral pieces.

Franz Schreker was a prominent figure in early 20th-century Austro-German music, his reputation as an opera composer rivaling that of Richard Strauss. The Prelude to a Drama is the concert overture of Schreker’s acclaimed opera Die Gezeichneten, a lurid drama involving murder and madness. Conceived as a theatrical pantomime, The Birthday of the Infanta adapts Oscar Wilde’s tragic tale of an ugly dwarf who dies of a broken heart, while the Romantic Suite fully explores the composer’s colorfully detailed and translucent orchestration and lyrical expressiveness. The Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra dates back to the beginnings of music broadcasting in 1923. Since then it has developed its position to become one of Berlin’s top orchestras, and today is ranked in the highest echelon of German radio orchestras. JoAnn Falletta became the first female conductor to lead a major American ensemble upon her appointment as music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra in 1999.