Strauss, R: Don Juan, Op. 20

Fabio Luisi and Staatskapelle Dresden return with another definitive recording of music by Richard Strauss. This album includes three of his great tone poems, Don Juan, Aus Italien and Don Quixote.

These recordings were originally recorded for Denon in 1988/9 and are now available on CD for the first time in 15 years.

Highly acclaimed performances from one of the world’s leading conductors.

Idiomatic performances from an orchestra with a long affinity with the music of Richard Strauss.

‘Blomstedt's relaxed and witty account of Till Eulenspiegel will, I suspect, become one of my favourite recorded performances of this work. His Tod und Verkkirung, notable for scrupulous observance of Strauss's dynamics, is thrilling and ardently played'. 'Blomstedt conducts a memorable performance of Metamorphosen. Blomstedt has the advantage of the Dresden orchestra, which plays Strauss as almost no one else does, for an interpretation that comes near to rivalling Karajan's (DG) in mellowness'. Gramophone

'This is an excellent performance, recorded with all Denon's usual skill and of course played by the Dresden orchestra with an almost arrogant authority'. (Also Sprach) 'Blomstedt's Don Juan is an ardent cavalier and the oboe soloist a real artist' Gramophone

The festival of Richard Strauss’s music held in London during October 1947 was the result of a joint initiative by Sir Thomas Beecham and Ernst Roth, Richard Strauss’s publisher at Boosey & Hawkes. A vital part of this initiative was the presence of the composer himself. Strauss and his wife were then living as impoverished exiles in Switzerland: UK performance royalties on the composer’s work had been frozen during the war, but if he came to England he could collect those royalties and gather new payments for performances of his music – and he could also earn a good fee if he conducted. The festival opened with two concerts at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, given by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under Beecham, in the presence of an approving Strauss. Beecham also conducted two concert performances of the opera Elektra at the BBC’s Maida Vale studios, again with a very satisfied composer in attendance. Important events these may have been, but the highlight of the festival was a concert at the Royal Albert Hall on the Sunday evening of 19 October, in which Strauss himself conducted the Philharmonia Orchestra in a programme of three works, Don Juan, the Burleske for piano and orchestra and the Sinfonia domestica, with a new symphonic arrangement of the waltzes from Der Rosenkavalier as an encore. It is said that Strauss wanted to conduct his Alpine Symphony, and that the huge instrumental forces required in this work made it economically impossible, but he would have been content with the choice of the Sinfonia domestica, since its homespun subject matter made it a favourite among his own works. This too needed a large orchestra, and well-known extra players from other London orchestras were recruited for the occasion, including the Royal Philharmonic’s clarinettist, Jack Brymer. For the Burleske Strauss chose the little-known pianist Alfred Blumen as soloist. Blumen had worked with Strauss on several occasions over a period of many years, notably in a long tour of South America with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra in 1923, during which they gave performances of Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto in addition to the Burleske. Now living in Britain, Blumen had also fallen on hard times, and Strauss wanted his old colleague to earn a concert fee.

Extract from the note Alan Sanders, 2008

This is the first release in a new collaboration between PentaTone and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg. These great Strauss Tone Poems need no further recommendation than to say they are superbly played. Highly recommended in stunning surround sound.

After the successful release of Richard Strauss's Ein Heldenleben in 2004, Mariss Jansons and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra once again present two familiar symphonic poems by Richard Strauss, who had close ties with the then fledgling Concertgebouw Orchestra. This CD brings together live performances of Don Juan and Eine Alpensinfonie which were recorded during the 2007-8 season and which met with great acclaim both in and outside the Netherlands.Although Don Juan and Eine Alpensinfonie were not dedicated to Willem Mengelberg and the Concertgebouw Orchestra, as Ein Heldenleben was, both works sound here as if they were written for the Amsterdam-based orchestra.

"A rich, dramatic Don Juan, built on bitter-sweet woodwind timbres, magnificently bright brasses and uncommonly velvety strings." [Don Juan] The New York Times concert review