Strauss, R.: Don Juan / Till Eulenspiegel / Death And Transfiguration

Description

Richard Strauss (1864 - 1949) Death and Transfiguration (Tod und Verklarung) Opus 24 Tone-poem for large orchestra (Tondichtung f??r grossesOrchester) Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks Opus 28 (Till Eulenspiegelslustige Streiche) Don Juan Opus 20 The German composer and conductor Richard Strauss represents aremarkable extension of the work of Liszt and Wagner in the symphonic poems of his earlycareer and in his operas shows an equally remarkable use of late romantic orchestral idiomoften within an almost Mozartian framework. Born in Munich, the son of a distinguishedhorn-player and his second wife, a member of a rich brewing family, he had a sound generaleducation at the Ludwigsgymnasium in Munich, while undertaking musical studies underteachers of some distinction. Before he left school in 1882 he had already enjoyed somesuccess as a composer, continued during his brief period at Munich University, with thecomposition of a Violin Concerto, a Horn Concerto and a Cello Sonata. By the age of 21 hehad been appointed assistant conductor to the weIl known orchestra at Meiningen under Hansvon B??low, whom he succeeded in the same year.In 1886 Strauss resigned from Meiningen and began the series oftone-poems that seemed to extend to the utmost limit the extra-musical content of theform. Aus Italien was followed by Macbeth, Don Juan,Tod und Verklarung, and, after a gap of a few years, Till Eulenspiegel, Also sprach Zarathustra, Don Quixote andEin Heldenleben. Meanwhile Strauss wasestablishing himself as a conductor of high reputation, directing the Berlin PhilharmonicOrchestra for a season and taking appointments at Munich and then at the opera in Berlin,where he later was conductor of the Court Orchestra.The new century brought a renewed attention to the compositionof opera, a medium in which he had not initially been particularly successful. The firstperformance of Salome in Dresden in 1905 was followed in 1909 by Elektra in the same city,with a libretto by the writer with whom he was to enjoy a fruitful collaboration, Hugo vonHoffmannsthal. Der Rosenkavalier, a romantic opera in the world of Mozart, was staged atthe Court Opera in Dresden in 1911, followed by ten further operas, ending only withCapriccio, staged at the Staatsoper in Munich in 1942.It was unfortunate that Strauss, in common with certain othermusicians of the greatest distinction, was compromised by association with the NationalSocialist Government that came to power in Germany in 1933. His acquiescence, when giventhe position of president of the German Reichsmusikkammer and his ingenuous willingness totake the place of Bruno Walter at a Berlin concert, when Walter had been obliged towithdraw after threats of officially inspired disorder, and of Toscanini, who hadwithdrawn from projected performances in Bayreuth in voluntary protest at anti-SemiticNational Socialist policies in Germany, were remembered. The fact that his daughter-in-lawwas Jewish and that she and her grandchildren had to