finding the lovable in Richard Strauss

[calimac]

My least-favorite composers in the standard orchestral repertoire are the Giganticists of the 1890-1915 period. I'm an Apollonian, not a Dionysian: I find Mahler pretentious, overblown, and self-indulgent, and the same is true of most of Richard Strauss. I hope never again to have to hear his Death or his Transfiguration, his Hero's interminable Life, or Zarathustra making pronouncements.

But I have to keep adding that there is music by Strauss (and by Mahler, too) that I enjoy. Among Strauss's tone poems, the early Don Juan and especially Till Eulenspiegel are neat, imaginative, and colorful, and at 15 minutes each do not overstay their welcome. (I do like long music, but it has to be music that I want to hear at such length.) The young Strauss, like the young Heinlein (or Clarke, or Herbert, or Asimov), was still trying to tell stories, and had not yet turned to pronouncing philosophy.

And then there are Strauss's bookend periods. Like many other composers around World War I, he discovered neoclassicism and a more generally restrained and enjoyable style, and was granted a long old age to practice them (Der Rosenkavalier, a bit earlier in date, is his best-known move in this direction and one of his first).

Even better, and obscurer, is really early Strauss, when he was trying to be the heir of Mendelssohn and Schumann instead of Liszt and Wagner. There's a couple lovely pieces for wind ensemble that I'd like to hear in concert some day, and there's his Horn Concerto No. 1.

So when the concerto and Don Juan showed up on last Friday's Symphony Silicon Valley program along with Beethoven's Eroica, I did not blanch or run away, but merely sniffed "Hmm, a lot of testosterone in the air tonight," and reviewed it for SF Classical Voice.

Comments

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

Strauss wrote his oboe concerto for John DeLancy, father of the Star Trek: The Next Generation actor who played "Q." The old man looks just like his son in the picture I've seen. I like Til Eulenspiegel too, even though he was an Owlhoot. I like his Burleske for piano and orchestra, and have had some enjoyment from his two works for piano left hand and orchestra as well, though not so much that I remember what I heard afterward.

I've searched diligently for Mahler that I didn't dislike. The Kindertotenlieder are good, but too harrowing to listen to very much. I've put in some time on the Wunderhorn songs (piano/vocal versions) too. The thing of his that I've listened to multiple times is "Das Lied von der Erde," in the piano/vocal version. I liked it a lot better than the symphony I fitfully dozed through (which had interesting moments but just bleeding didn't know when to get the hell off the stage -- I kept thinking of the loquacious revival preacher who drove Mark Twain to extract money from the collection basket from sheer spite).

"Sit down, Gustav!"

Mahler works I like

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Symphony No. 1.

First 4 movements of Symphony No. 2 (in a sufficiently good performance).