Strauss, R: Metamorphosen

“Joan Rodgers's singing...has bags of personality and that's the main thing...Tone-poem and elegy both start well, but have their problematic interpretative moments...The central sweep, though, is clear and impressive, the Strasbourg strings remarkably fine.” BBC Music Magazine, June 2011 ***

“Don Juan has been played and recorded so often that it might seem impossibile to conjure the music into sounding as fresh as the day it was written. Yet it happens here, with a conductor-and-orchestra team that delivers sweeping panache, needlepoint precision, and vividly characterised solo playing (superb horns!). In the brooding, autumnal Metamorphosen, the quality of the Strasbourg string-playing is if anything higher.” Classic FM Magazine, July 2011 *****

“The account of Don Juan cannot be faulted: ideally paced, with a bold contribution from the horns and strings which are virile and rich. The tension in Metamorphosen, although not low, is a little inconsistent but reaches an impressively passionate climax with good, full-bodied recording. The conductor also provides highly sympathetic accompaniments for his soloist, Joan Rodgers.” Gramophone Magazine, June 2011

“This lusciously rewarding programme opens with an admirably ardent, appropriately cocksure but always musically disciplined Don Juan, played with panache by the Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg...[Metamorphosen] is beautifully played, finely shaped and exquisitely internally balanced.” Sunday Times, 11th September 2011

“An emotionally generous Mahlerian, Barbirollo scales the heights and plumbs the depths of the Sixth in thrillingly remastered sound. The Strauss luxuriates in sonorously post-conflictual afterglow.” BBC Music Magazine, January 2009 ****

“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

“In this famous 1967 performance of the Symphony the sound is superb, the playing magnificent. Klemperer lets Mahler’s score tell its own story and one cannot listen without remembering that he knew and worked with the composer.” Gramophone Magazine

“Reducing the string size of Strauss's Metamorphosen from 23 to the seven of the composer's short score… might seem to be going light on the tragic force of this great wartime elegy. Not so in the hands of the Nash Ensemble. Truthful recording does full justice to the warmth, poise and integration of these marvellous performances.” BBC Music Magazine, March 2007 *****

“The early and late Strauss on this finely recorded disc are separated by some 60 years: the Piano Quartet was completed in 1884, the year after Wagner's death, while Metamorphosen dates from the early months of 1945. Strauss at 20 had abundant promise: Strauss at 80 had managed to avoid lapsing intoer self-parody. The result is full of interest.
The Piano Quartet is invariably labelled 'Brahmsian' and the opening makes that association clear. Yet the piece is too loosely put together, too focused on small-scale harmonic effects, to sound like Brahms for long. Anyone looking for evidence that Strauss's true metier would be programme music and opera need look no further. It's an enjoyable piece for all that, expansively dramatic and genuinely expressive with that touch of spontaneity which signals Strauss at his best.
The Nash Ensemble bring affectionate fervour to the Quartet, without lingering excessively over its creakier transitions. A cooler touch might have been preferable with the Capriccio Prelude and Metamorphosen – the latter in particular risks overheating, with uniformly high dynamic levels. The status of this version of Metamorphosen is ambiguous, since it derives from a draft discovered in 1990. This preceded the final scoring for 23 solo strings, and one wonders if Strauss might not have revised the former in light of the latter had he wished to preserve it – especially the very awkward harmonic switch at the end, which the final version eliminates. A curiosity, then, which inevitably sounds more like a dilution of the familiar score than a genuine alternative.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“The music’s autumnal soulfulness suits The Nash Ensemble’s house style to near-perfection … the same classy artistry shines through their performances of the string sextet prelude to Strauss’s last opera Capriccio, and of the much earlier Piano Quartet—Brahms and Schumann-influenced and very attractive” Classic FM Magazine

‘A magnificent account of Metamorphosen: eloquent, powerful and well controlled. Kempe’s Don Juan has splendid panache and brilliance, excellently characterised and beautifully played, and Till Eulenspiegel is a model of wit and human warmth, rich in energy and earthy good humour.’ (The Gramophone)