SACDs - Strauss, R

“A dramatic case of fire and ice if ever there was one...You might argue that nobility has to some extent been sacrificed to the brazenness of the playing but you cannot deny the fervour of what they bring. I don't know of a more exciting account on disc.” Gramophone Magazine, January 2013

“The night opening is evocatively veiled, the mountain theme especially, and moves organically to its spiritual sunrise. Throughout there's a natural sense of pace between vigorous clambering and spacious nature panoramas. Shipway moulds his strings to sit every situation...I'd be very happy to hear more Strauss from this remarkable team.” BBC Music Magazine, March 2013 *****

“This exciting reading is worth a try, if not a classic” Sunday Times, 1st July 2012

“one feels a distinct frisson with the arrival of Klytaemnestra...Caricature is totally eschewed; however tortured Klytaemnestra may be, Palmer maintains an innate regality in her vocal presence...[Goerne's] text is penetratingly delivered...Storey offers a heroic voice as Aegisthus, for a change, with all the notes truly sounded...One can tell that the LSO rejoices in playing this music...Any Elektra enthusiast will want to hear Goerne and the magnificent Palmer.” International Record Review, July/August 2012

“if vocal discipline is not Charbonnet’s strong suit that may be a virtue in this role...It is difficult to find any faults in Felicity Palmer’s classic Klytämnestra...she is always scrupulously musical and no thoughts of caricature invade one’s attention...[Storey creates] an individual sound for the character of Ägisthus..[Goerne] falls not far short of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau in establishing a dark, mysterious presence at his entry” classicalsource.com, July 2012

“Gergiev grasps the Wagnerian intensity of the score, also capturing the Straussian extremist tendencies with thrilling impact. Thrusting playing by the LSO helps.” The Scotsman, 9th July 2012 *****

“Gothic glory lies in the London Symphony Orchestra’s playing: visceral in impact, full of details usually lost in an opera house pit...Charbonnet doesn’t have enough heft at the top for the increasingly unhinged Elektra: the compensation comes in her commitment and passion.” The Times, 20th July 2012 ***

“[Gergiev] conveys passions and tensions with compelling, sometimes deafening power...[Charbonnet is] strongly involved without, thankfully, overplaying the weirdness...[Palmer's Klytaemnestra is] the real star of this show, slicing through Gergiev's sound-wall with incisive diction and keen characterisation: she's neurotic, malevolent but far from the conventional Germanic witch. Ian Storey makes Aegisth's few lines at once fatuous and menacing.” BBC Music Magazine, September 2012 ***

“Gergiev has the LSO sailing through metre- and key-changes with almost effortless fluidity, and Strauss's dramaturgical acumen has never seemed clearer...Charbonnet generates plenty of manic excitement with her ultra-aggressive vibrato but...there are many signs of considerable theatrical intelligence; at times her conviction triumphs over her own voice...Goerne is the one vocal marvel here: his Orestes has nobility and morality” Gramophone Magazine, October 2012

“This live recording of Strauss’s Nietzschean masterpiece [...] is thrilling in that simultaneously visceral and intellectual way that marks out Strauss. Haitink’s account [...] has immense grandeur.” Sunday Times, 24th January 2010 ***

“no-one has quite Haitink's sense of the piece as a rational symphonic argument...The performance gathers strength and intensity as it proceeds...Admirers should not hesitate to acquire an archetypal example of Haitink's unobtrusive podium manner.” Gramophone Magazine, April 2010

“There are so many good recordings of the Alpine Symphony on the market now, but this has moments that are as fine as any, and arguably the noblest overall shape of all.” BBC Music Magazine, April 2010 *****

“Haitink draws out lucid instrumental detail from Strauss’s complex combinations of timbres, establishing apt colours in the summoning of atmosphere...his natural feel for the music’s fluctuating pulse lends this momentous journey an ineluctable sense of purpose, direction and exhilaration.” The Telegraph, 24th March 2010 *****

“A splendid augury of things to come in this team's Strauss series.” BBC Music Magazine, November 2007 *****

“Ein Heldenleben and Metamorphosen, though written at opposite ends of Strauss's long career, make an ideal coupling, as both were directly inspired by Beethoven's Eroica Symphony. The warm strength of the key of E flat is at the root of Heldenleben too, while Metamorphosen, reflecting Strauss's pain over the wartime destruction of so much he loved in Germany, repeatedly and movingly quotes the Eroica's Funeral March.
Aptly too, the orchestra is the Staatskapelle Dresden, Strauss's favourite, responsible for many Strauss performances.
In this new version of Heldenleben, Fabio Luisi has opted to go back to what he describes as the original ending. This was Strauss's first idea, never published, of ending the piece pianissimo.
It was only later, realising that the response of audiences would be greater from a loud ending, that he was persuaded to append the now usual ending, adding some two dozen bars with fanfares and a final fortissimo chord.
Luisi proves an outstanding Straussian, drawing passionate playing from the orchestra, as flamboyant in Heldenleben as anyone would want, and darkly intense in the valedictory paragraphs and complex counterpoint of Metamorphosen, though the recording makes it sound as though more than 23 strings are playing. In Heldenleben Luisi is excellent in bringing out the massive structure of the work like a gigantic sonata form, quite apart from the programmatic element. Kai Vogler proves an outstanding violin soloist in the role of the Hero's partner, a clear portrait of the volatile Frau Strauss, here played with just the right degree of spontaneous flexibility. The recording is exceptionally full and brilliant, to match the resonant beauty of the playing.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“Luisi proves an outstanding Straussian, drawing passionate playing from the orchestra, as flamboyant in Heldenleben as anyone would want, and darkly intense in the valedictory paragraphs and complex counterpoint of Metamorphosen… In Heldenleben… Kai Vogler proves an outstanding violin soloist in the role of the Hero's partner, a clear portrait of the volatile Frau Strauss, here played with just the right degree of spontaneous flexibility. The recording is exceptionally full and brilliant, to match the resonant beauty of the playing.” Gramophone Magazine, December 2007

“Iván Fischer and the enlarged Budapest Festival Orchestra give a magnificent account of the work, readily going over the sensual top when Strauss demands it, but with Fischer ensuring that Strauss's underlying lyrical flow moves seamlessly but erotically onwards to the final climax. This is surely a work for sumptuous surround sound, which is exactly what the Channel Classics recording team provide, and very impressively, too.” Gramophone Magazine, July 2007

“Richard Strauss's Josephslegende (1914) is a truly extraordinary work. It was written for Diaghilev, who wanted something sensational to follow The Rite ofSpring. But Nijinsky was unable to take the titlerole planned for him, and it was the young Massine as substitute who had to dance what Nijinsky later described as 'undanceable music'. But Nijinsky also had an eccentric hand in the extraordinary scenario which tells of the attempted and unsuccessful seduction of Joseph by Potiphar's wife, her suicide after her failure, the attempt by the suspicious Potiphar to torture the innocent David, and his celestial rescue by an angel who frees him from his bonds.
All this drew from Strauss a richly sensuous score, in many ways an amalgam of his previous successes, predominantly Salome, in the voluptuous dances of the veiled and unveiled women near the begining, climaxed by 'Sulamith's dance' of burning desire. But the spectacle of the AlpineSymphony, the passion of Don Juan, the hyperbole of Ein Heldenleben, to say nothing of a touch of Death and Transfiguration, are all mixed in. The booklet offers an elaborate cued synopsis of the narrative, so that one can relate Strauss's extraordinary score to what is being described.
Iván Fischer and the enlarged Budapest Festival Orchestra give a magnificent account of the work, readily going over the sensual top when Strauss demands it, but with Fischer ensuring that Strauss's underlying lyrical flow moves seamlessly but erotically onwards to the final climax. This is surely a work for sumptuous surround sound, which is exactly what the Channel Classics recording team provide, and very impressively, too.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010