finding the lovable in Richard Strauss
May. 3rd, 2005 09:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacMy 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.
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.
