Strauss Digital

Vladimir Jurowski and the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin excel in these new recordings of Richard Strauss’s electrifying Also Sprach Zarathustra and Mahler’s Totenfeier, to coincide with the Russian maestro taking up office as Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the orchestra.

ATMA Classique is pleased to present Richard Strauss / Arvo Part the label's first recording project with I Musici de Montreal and the ensemble's first album in ten years. Richard Strauss / Arvo Part is also the first album under the direction of Jean-Marie Zeitouni, who was the ensemble's Music Director until April 2021.

Clemens Krauss leads a collection of orchestras through a stunning programme of works from Richard Strauss, Franz Schubert, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Maurice Ravel, and Modest Mussorgsky.

Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks, Op. 28, is a tone poem written in 1894–95 by Richard Strauss. It chronicles the misadventures and pranks of the German peasant folk hero Till Eulenspiegel, who is represented by two themes. The first, played by the horn, is a lilting melody that reaches a peak, falls downward, and ends in three long, loud notes, each progressively lower. The second, for D clarinet, is crafty and wheedling, suggesting a trickster doing what he does best. (Till Eulenspiegel is a well-known Schnickelfritz.)

Franz Schmidt was a cellist of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra himself and he allowed the orchestra to premiere his symphony in 1913, which since then belongs in the orchestra’s main repertoire.

The Herman Krebbers Edition offers the most comprehensive collection ever issued of the recorded art of Herman Krebbers (1923–2018) featuring the great Dutch violinist as concerto soloist, chamber musician and concert master and issued to mark the centenary of his birth.

2024 marks the 40th anniversary of the Saito Kinen Orchestra, and is commemorated with the release of this live recording of the orchestra conducted by Nodoka Okisawa at the 2024 Seiji Ozawa Matsumoto Festival.

Following their critically acclaimed album of English Music for Strings, Sinfonia of London and John Wilson turn to Germany and three outstanding works for string orchestra. Franz Schreker’s Intermezzo, the oldest piece here, was composed in 1900, before Schreker’s rise to fame in the opera houses of Germany and Austria, but shows strong indications of what was to follow. Korngold composed the Symphonische Serenade following his return to Vienna from Hollywood after the Second World War, and shortly before he wrote his Symphony in F sharp.

The four works on this album, all composed in the 1940s, embrace the lingering end of one musical tradition and the vigorous upsurge of another. Mellifluous, retrospective and playful, the Duet Concertino and Prelude to Capriccio were works of Richard Strauss’s Indian Summer – an old man’s refuge from the barbarism of war and its aftermath. What the public thought of them was incidental, even irrelevant.