Richard Strauss - Strauss conducts Strauss, Mozart, Beethoven (7CD) (2014)

In honor of the 150th anniversary of Richard Strauss' birth, DG gives us this collection featuring the composer as conductor. While on the surface this would seem a wonderful opportunity to hear his music as Strauss intended it, this set winds up being something else: an examination of what happened when 19th century conducting styles met 20th century technology. For while Strauss is regularly feted as being one of the great conductors of his era, those who know also emphasize the fact that he didn't like recording all that much. Thus, this Strauss set is fascinating evidence of how recording technology can alter our perceptions of music.

The majority of the recordings in this box date from 1926-1929, the very beginning of the electrical era. DG hasn't been able to clean up all the recordings: there is a lot of surface noise (especially in the 1933 "Don Quixote") and some odd background thumping (especially in the Beethoven 7th). In these early recordings, it is difficult to hear much beyond the main melodic line--the bass and harmony disappears under the surface noise. Strauss' music is something you need to hear live or in very good stereo recordings (like the Rudolf Kempe/Dresden Staatskapelle recordings of Strauss just reissued by Warner ] that feature the best performances of Strauss' orchestral music ever made), to capture all the harmonic lushness of his music. In these recordings, Strauss focuses on shaping his melodic lines, which causes the pictorial elements of the tone poems to fall apart--the cackling music of the hero's adversaries in "Ein Heldenleben" and the flock of sheep in the 1933 "Don Quixote" fail to fully convince. (By contrast, a 1941 "Don Quixote" with much better sonics--also included in the set--has a much more convincing flock of sheep. In fact, I'm now convinced that if you want to get the measure of a Strauss conductor, listen to how he handles the sheep music: only the greatest can make it sound like sheep and music simultaneously, as Strauss finally did in 1941.)

But that emphasis on the melodic line also pays dividends. Strauss' account of "Till Eulenspiegel" is among the most impish on record; "Tod und Verklarung" becomes touching rather than maudlin (as it so often does); the waltzes from "Der Rosenkavalier" go with a swing. The only piece that Strauss can't save is the "Japanese Festmusik," a potboiler that is probably the best evidence of just far Strauss was willing to compromise his aesthetic sensibilities under the Third Reich (answer: somewhat, but not completely). Perhaps the most surprising insights come from the suite from "Der Burger als Edelmann," which Strauss manages to give a surprisingly German inflection. (Even Kempe makes it sound quite French, as most conductors do.) In that context, the suite seems like less of an outlier in Strauss' output than it normally does.

The set also provides us with three discs of Strauss conducting Beethoven, Mozart, and other German works. This seems quite exciting, as Strauss is frequently spoken of as one of the great Mozart conductors and led the revival of interest in his music at the turn of the twentieth century. But here we run into the other problem of early recordings: time limits. Works had to be partitioned to fit on the three minute sides of 78s, which not infrequently led to seemingly eccentric tempo choices. Strauss' Mozart and Beethoven recordings seem to suffer from this problem: the Allegro movements of the symphonies are taken at a very high speed, much as if Strauss was trying to finish up in order to catch the bus home. While not as perverse as, say, Sir Thomas Beecham's Beethoven recordings (with the possible exception of Strauss' bizarre "Zauberflote" Overture), there's no sense of insight or beauty in those movements.

Which is a shame, because the slow movements demonstrate that Strauss was one of the greatest Mozart conductors of the century. The Adagios and the Andantes (especially in the Mozart 39th and 40th symphonies, with the Allegretto of the Beethoven 7th not far behind) unfold with a sense of pace and beauty matched only by Karl Bohm ]: these are deliberate and thoughtful readings, worth fighting the surface noise to hear. Strauss' recordings of Gluck's Overture to "Iphigenie en Aulide" and Cornelius' "Die Barbier von Bagdad" are utterly delightful. And his two Wagner excerpts are a revelation: clean, unfussy, and straightforward, they refuse to wallow in Wagner's lush harmonics and unfold with a clean sense of musical line. In fact, the "Flying Dutchman" Overture may be one of the best readings I've heard.

This box set will mainly appeal to those who are interested in historical recordings, and are willing to put up with occasionally primitive sound. (Those looking for great modern stereo recordings should look at the Kempe set linked above: it may be from the early 1970s, but sounds like it was recorded yesterday.) Given that, one of the main problems with this release is the lack of documentation: the booklet tells us nothing about where or when (aside from the year, located in small print on the last page) these recordings were made. After all, people who buy historical recordings generally want to know more, not less about the music. But for those who want the aural evidence to understand how the late 19th century Strauss dealt with early 20th century technology, this set is a fascinating time capsule into the early years of classical music recording.