Strauss Digital

„If ever there was a dysfunctional family, it was the one in this opera, based on a Greek tragedy but deeply imbued with the ideas of Sigmund Freud. The mother Clytemnestra (mezzo-soprano Regina Resnik) and her lover Aegisthus (tenor Gerhard Stolze) have murdered the father, Agamemnon, on his triumphant return from the Trojan War. They have an excuse: Agamemnon gave his daughter Iphigenia for a human sacrifice.

Though he is much less well remembered than his more famous brothers, Johann II and Josef, Eduard Strauss was the master of the quick polka and the galop with a succession of distinctive and beguiling melodies and a genius for orchestration.

Like Richard Strauss, besides the dominating stage works Richard Wagner’s oeuvre catalogue shows several works for other genres, including compositions for choir, piano and chamber music as well as songs. Amongst them, the Wesendonck-Lieder, composed after texts by his occasional muse, Mathilde von Wesendonck, the wife of a Swiss industrialist, have attained special popularity. Very special is the version which can be heard on this recording for deep voice played by the violoncello. Additionally to the chamber pieces by Richard Strauss also the Album Page and prelude to Tristan und Isolde in the cello/piano version by Richard Wagner can be found on this album.

In 1947 a brilliant generation of Austro-German singers represented the Vienna State Opera for a short season at Covent Garden. Among those known to London audiences from before the war were Maria Cebotari and Hans Hotter; new were Anton Dermota, Erich Kunz and an array of sopranos headed by Hilde Gueden, Sena Jurinac, Emmy Loose, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Irmgard Seefried and Ljuba Welitsch. For one famous evening Richard Tauber joined the cast of Don Giovanni before entering the hospital in which he died four months later. It was a season which, more than any other event at the time, reassured opera-goers that traditions survived and that singing of real distinction, even greatness, might yet be heard in the postwar world.

Commanding the podium with his slender figure, theatrical shock of hair and penetrating blue eyes, Herbert von Karajan projected the hieratic image of the conductor as officiant of some quasi-mystic rite. And anyone who ever saw him conduct live or on his many audiovisual recordings will agree that in his performances, music did indeed become a religion and Karajan its high-priest. Karajan (1908-1989) embodied classical music in the general consciousness as an epoch-making conductor, media star, opera producer, festival director and festival founder.

Expect lots of surprises in this final batch of our Furtwängler digital retrospective!

Herbert von Karajan leads the Philharmonia Orchestra in performing works by Waldteufel, J. Strauss I & II, Chabrier, Weinberger, and Offenbach.

A classical cellist, soloist of the Orchestre symphonique de la Monnaie, involved in chamber music, jazz/ rock and folk/fiddle meets an eclectic pianist familiar with Bach, Chopin, Franck or Corrigliano as much as with jazz and improvisation. Loco Motive Trio and Blade Runner band for the first one, Soledad for the second one and until 2014, Trio Talweg for both of them (founded in 2004 with Sébastien Surel) : Sébastien Walnier and Alexander Gurning pride very seriously opening up musical approaches, faithful to each musical style they play and free to travel from one world to another. Between «walking» and «awakening», Walning explores different musical styles in all simplicity.

The Decca Conductor's Gallery series presents an A–Z of 23 conductors in a feast of classic recordings from Decca’s early years – 1929–1949 – including the golden age of its ‘ffrr’ technology.