Strauss, R: Ein Heldenleben, Op. 40 (A Hero's Life)

In a very short time, Yannick Nézet-Séguin has become one of the most sought-after young conductors in the world, popular with orchestras and audiences alike. Recently named as Music Director Designate of the Philadelphia Orchestra, he succeeded Valery Gergiev as Music Director of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra in 2008. He is also Chief Guest Conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

On this the second of four projected discs for BIS, the Rotterdam Philharmonic here perform two of Richard Strauss’ most popular works: The tone poem Ein Heldenleben (A Hero’s Life) has often been described as an autobiographical work. The six interwoven sections describe themes of hope, love and courage, with a scherzo that mocks the hero’s enemies and a final climax that sees the hero withdraw from the world fulfilled.

The Four Last Songs were the last works that Strauss composed before his death in 1949, and throughout the works, the pervading mood is one of death and transience. The Rotterdam Orchestra are here joined by Dorothea Röschmann, who has built a reputation on the opera stage as one of the most admired present interpreters of Mozart and of lieder.

Hot on the heels of an Editor’s Choice for his Alpine Symphony, Bernard Haitink conducts the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, one of the world’s greatest Strauss ensembles, in Ein Heldenleben (A Hero's Life) whose US première it gave in 1900. The CSO pours out a lush interpretation of Richard Strauss’s large and complex tone poem in their newest live recording. Principal Conductor Bernard Haitink leads with restraint and allows the strings and woodwinds to sing. In the famous Battle Scene, the brass and percussion roar, while concertmaster Robert Chen paints his violin solos depicting Strauss’ wife, Pauline, with tender beauty. Webern’s early tone poem Im Sommerwind is indebted to Strauss’s rhapsodic romanticism and overflows with spacious melodies. A musical force in Chicago and around the world, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra is consistently hailed as one of the finest international orchestras.

“Haitink worked his customary miracles on behalf of Richard Strauss and the CSO gave him what it always gives him: superb and deeply felt playing… In Webern’s Im Sommerwind, Haitink asked for a refined beauty of sound and got it in abundance.” Chicago Tribune Concert Review

20-page booklet with notes in English, French & German.

Hot on the heels of an Editor’s Choice for his Alpine Symphony, Bernard Haitink conducts the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, one of the world’s greatest Strauss ensembles, in Ein Heldenleben (A Hero's Life) whose US première it gave in 1900. The CSO pours out a lush interpretation of Richard Strauss’s large and complex tone poem in their newest live recording. Principal Conductor Bernard Haitink leads with restraint and allows the strings and woodwinds to sing. In the famous Battle Scene, the brass and percussion roar, while concertmaster Robert Chen paints his violin solos depicting Strauss’ wife, Pauline, with tender beauty. Webern’s early tone poem Im Sommerwind is indebted to Strauss’s rhapsodic romanticism and overflows with spacious melodies. A musical force in Chicago and around the world, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra is consistently hailed as one of the finest international orchestras.

“Haitink worked his customary miracles on behalf of Richard Strauss and the CSO gave him what it always gives him: superb and deeply felt playing… In Webern’s Im Sommerwind, Haitink asked for a refined beauty of sound and got it in abundance.” Chicago Tribune Concert Review

This new Hybrid SACD recording features the first recording of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra with its new director of music, Manfred Honeck. The main work is Richard Strauss’ massive tone poem “Ein Heldenleben”, but the disc also includes Verdi’s overture to “La Forza del Destino”, as well as the world premier of recent commission by the orchestra, a clarinet concerto by the contemporary American composer Alan Fletcher.

Richard Strauss’ symphonic poem Ein Heldenleben was written in 1898, and dedicated to the 27-year old conductor Willem Mengelberg and the Concertgebouw Orchestra. Ein Heldenleben is an episodic work in which the composer recalls his “heroic” struggle through life. The American composer Alan Fletcher, who’s clarinet concerto was commissioned by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and is here receiving its world premier recording, is president and CEO of the Aspen Music Festival and School, and studied under Roger Sessions and Milton Babbit.

The Austrian conductor Manfred Honeck began his career as conductor of Vienna's Jeunesse Orchestra, which he co-founded, and as assistant to Claudio Abbado at the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra in Vienna. After several highly successful guest appearances as conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, he was appointed its ninth Music Director in 2008.

Sanderling was born in Arys, East Prussia on 19 September 1912. From 1942 to 1960 he was joint principal conductor with Evgeny Mravinsky at the Leningrad Philharmonic, and then led the Berlin Symphony Orchestra and Dresden Staatskapelle. During the 1960s Sanderling made successful appearances in Prague, Salzburg, Vienna and Warsaw, and made his British debut in 1970, becoming particularly associated with the Philharmonia in January 1980, and was later appointed their Conductor Emeritus. He conducted the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra in 1976 in a sequence of outstanding performances which led to subsequent appearances with the orchestra in 1978, 1980 and 1990. During the 1990s Sanderling enjoyed a distinguished international career, giving notable performances with the Royal Amsterdam Concertgebouw, LA Philharmonic Orchestra, Bavarian Radio and Cleveland orchestras.

Sanderling appears to have recorded 'Ein Heldenleben' on the obscure Japanese Weitblick label from 1972 though it is not known if this is still available. Notwithstanding, this Manchester live recording with the BBC Northern Symphony Orchestra preserves Sanderling's wonderful performance in Manchester's Free Trade Hall on 30th September 1975 in excellent stereo. In April 1978, Sanderling returned to Manchester and conducted the BBCNSO once again, this time under studio conditions in Schubert's Unfinished Symphony, Sanderling's ONLY published account of this work, again in excellent stereo.

Leader Barry Griffiths recalls Sanderling in rehearsal as being 'very easy going and extremely pleasant to work with. He was very relaxed and humorous. As far as performance was concerned: 'He gave us the impression that he thought we were a great orchestra and as a result he got the absolute most out of us. In performance he was always in command but never tense. This was the first time that I had played the solo part in Heldenleben in public, and he helped me all the way through.'

This unusual pairing was not without point. Towards the end of Ein Heldenleben, as Strauss’s hero is lacerated with doubt as to the value and purpose of his existence, he contemplates becoming a shepherd. The idea does not persist. So complete a withdrawal from the world was too drastic a move for a young man possessed of so strong a sense of mission. (Strauss was only 34 when he wrote Ein Heldenleben.) The psychic upheaval has, however, caused him to understand the power of renunciation, a power that will bring true contentment when the time for retirement finally comes. Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony has a not dissimilar trajectory. Beginning with the sensation of ‘pleasant, cheerful feelings awakened on arrival in the countryside’, it ends with a sweet-sung finale during which Beethoven becomes the shepherds, sharing with them their mood of thanksgiving before a distant horn, emblem of autumn and the dying year, sounds its lament. To call either piece ‘programmatic’ is to misrepresent it. Beethoven’s Pastoral does not so much describe nature as explore the feelings it arouses in the human heart and imagination; Ein Heldenleben is as much a study of evolving states of mind as a paean to the heroic ideal. It is also worth remarking that both works offer ingenious adaptations of classical form. Where Beethoven adapts the four-movement symphonic structure by linking scherzo and finale by means of a Storm that takes the idea of a brief preface to the finale into hitherto unimagined territory, so Strauss confounds his critics by creating a tone-poem that has its roots in an extended classical sonata-form structure. There are six sections: first subject (the hero), transitional subject (his adversaries the critics), second subject (his wife and companion in love), development (deeds of war), recapitulation (works of peace and troubled self-analysis), and coda (fulfilment in retirement). From the booklet note ,
Richard Osborne, 2009

Live recording of a concert given on 30th May 1969 in The Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory.

Walter Weller's father played with the Vienna Philharmonic and was a friend of Richard Strauss: he taught violin to the composer's grandson and to his own son,Walter. Later Walter aged 20, was appointed Konzertmeister and during the next 12 years, he regularly performed the Ein Heldenleben solos in concert, under Karl Böhm.After a chance substitution for Böhm, at the helm of the Vienna Phil, he launched a new career as a conductor, making many recordings for Decca. Weller was appointed director of the Belgian National Orchestra in 2006, embarking on this series of recordings with Fuga Libera.The label introduced him to the Bulgarian pianist Plamena Mangova whose ambition was to play Richard Strauss' Burleske.Weller, who often conducted the piece with Arrau and Gulda at the piano, warned the young virtuoso: "It's very difficult, we'll have to see…." but after two concert performances the project was duly launched.