Strauss, R: Metamorphosen

This collection sees Otto Klemperer lead the Philharmonia and New Philharmonia orchestras in compelling performances of works by Wagner and Richard Strauss. The set features highlights from each of Wagner’s most acclaimed operas, as well as Strauss’s Don Juan and a 1962 account of Tod und Verklärung that was hailed as one of Klemperer’s finest late recordings.

Ambivalent is the word which best describes Klemperer’s feelings about Germany’s two great musical Richards, Wagner and Strauss. During his early years as an opera conductor in Germany, Klemperer conducted a modicum of Strauss and a good deal of Wagner, though from the outset it was clear that he was never going to be an unthinking fan of either. The music of both composers did, nonetheless, cast its spell. Recording Act 1 of Wagner’s Die Walküre in London in 1969 was, he said, like meeting a woman he had loved 40 years ago and discovering that she was much as she had always been. He went on: ‘I find the music thrilling. Thrilling! One can say this or that about Wagner, but no one else could have written that music. No one! It’s as stupid to underestimate Wagner as it is to overestimate him. He doesn’t need either’.

Klemperer’s attitude to the operas of Richard Strauss was no less mixed. He thrilled to Salome, which even as an old man he considered to be one of the twentieth century’s most original scores, revered Elektra, and took great delight in Ariadne auf Naxos. On the other hand, he found too much ‘sugar-water’ in Der Rosenkavalier and was baffled by Die Frau ohne Schatten of which he conducted a handful of performances in Cologne in 1919.

The Strauss work which had first impressed Klemperer – he was 15 at the time – was Tod und Verklärung. What struck the young enthusiast was the quality of the orchestration and the remorselessness of the build-up of the thematic material, qualities Klemperer would later bring to his own reading of a work which does indeed advance implacably towards its sought-for goal: the soul’s transfiguration as memories of childhood visions and unattained artistic ideals grandly mingle.

Knowing the man as he did, Klemperer experienced few difficulties in coming to terms with Strauss’s equivocations during the Nazi era. As the Second World War drew towards its close Strauss began working on Metamorphosen, a threnody for 23 solo strings born of the trauma of wartime cultural loss: the Goethe house destroyed, Dresden, Munich, Weimar all in ruins. ‘Basically quite nice’ was Klemperer’s laconic

comment on the piece, yet no one was more eager to conduct it, an ambition he realised in Budapest in March 1948. Klemperer’s coupling of Metamorphosen with Tod und Verklärung on an LP first released in 1962 was widely welcomed as one of the finest of all his late recordings.

Herbert von Karajan’s Strauss recordings of the early 1980s, remastered in the 1990s, for the Karajan Gold Edition are a benchmark of lifetime of engagement with the composer in the concert hall and studio, and won unparalleled critical acclaim. For the first time they have been brought together in a specially priced single box. ”The greatest Strauss conductor of his day“ (The Penguin Guide).

To coincide with the 30th anniversary of Gidon Kremer’s Lockenhaus Chamber Music Festival in Austria, ECM releases a 5-CD box set of recordings from 1981-2008. Out-of-print material reappears here, joined by never-before-released recordings of Richard Strauss (conducted by Simon Rattle) and Messiaen.

Edition Lockenhaus is the first New Series release in ECM’s Old & New Masters range, produced as specially-priced limited edition, with 60-page booklet. It includes recordings from 1981, 1982, 1984, 1985, and 1986 – previously issued as Edition Lockenhaus Volumes 1/2 and 4/5 (ECM 1304/05 and 1347/48). These have been long unavailable on CD and LP, and are eagerly sought-after by Kremer aficionados. Lockenhaus has been, above all, a young musicians’ festival and some of the very greatest have appeared there, alongside Gidon Kremer, early in their careers – including players strongly associated with ECM: Kim Kashkashian, Thomas Zehetmair, Thomas Demenga, Robert Levin, Heinz Holliger and more.

The edition opens with unreleased recordings – from 2001 and 2008 – with Sir Simon Rattle and Roman Kofman conducting Kremerata Baltica in revelatory performances of Richard Strauss’s Metamorphosen and Olivier Messiaen’s Trois petites Liturgies de la Présence Divine. The committed interpretations convey the spirit of Lockenhaus. (Kremer himself has described Rattle’s conducting of Richard Strauss’s music as “unforgettable”).

Discs two to five focus on music by César Franck, André Caplet, Francis Poulenc, Leos Janácek, Igor Stravinsky, Dmitri Shostakovich and Erwin Schulhoff.

March 2011: 50th anniversary of the first recording by Neville Marriner and The Academy of St Martin in the Fields for Decca's L'Oiseau-Lyre label [Concerti grossi by Handel, Torelli, Albicastro and Locatelli]

March 1964: first recording by Marriner and The Academy on ARGO [Handel: Concerti grossi, op.3] - the start of a very remarkable recording partnership that extended to other labels [most notably PHILIPS]

Over a period of 40 years Marriner and The Academy made over 300 recordings but it is the association with DECCA / ARGO that was so unique and resulted in a huge catalogue of recordings of Baroque and Classical repertory - many of which remain in the catalogue today.

Between 1967-77 a distinguished series of recordings of late 19th- and 20th-century repertory established themselves as classics of the gramophone. This 50th anniversary edition presents a selection of these albums in repertory that ranges from Wagner to Stravinsky, Bartók and Shostakovich.

Each CD is presented in a sleeve with a replica of the original LP cover.

Wagner, Walton & Hindemith works receive their first international CD release

35 CD + CD-ROM (including Stephen Jay Taylor's 'Richard Strauss: The Man and his Music')

A superb collection of some of the greatest performances of Richard Strauss’s orchestral, operatic, chamber and vocal works, brought together in a stunning 35-CD edition of fantastic value.

The collection begins with a survey of Strauss’s orchestral music, including the supremely popular symphonic poems - Don Juan, Don Quixote, Also sprach Zarathustra, Till Eulenspiegel, Tod und Verklärung, Eine Alpensinfonie and Ein Heldenleben are included, together with comparatively rare orchestral works such as the wonderful Burlesque for piano and orchestra. These recordings, performed by the Staatskapelle Dresden and conducted by Rudolf Kempe, are a particular highlight of this box set, some of the greatest recordings of the classical catalogue.

Of Kempe’s Aus Italien, Gramophone stated:‘The Dresden orchestra play superbly and this version undoubtedly sweeps the board’. Of another release in the series, Gramophone commented: ‘the splendour of the Dresden orchestra is most impressive: at that period and under this conductor they may have had equals in this music but surely no superiors’.

An extensive survey of Strauss’s chamber music, performed by major international instrumentalists including Wolfgang Sawallisch (piano), Erno Sebestyen (violin), Wenn-Sinn Yang (cello) and the Sinnoffer Quartet.

Includes definitive performances of Strauss’s best-loved operas – Der Rosenkavelier, Elektra, Salome, Die Frau ohne Schatten, Ariadne auf Naxos plus the rarely heard Friedenstag.

In particular, Herbert von Karajan’s Der Rosenkavalier remains unsurpassed.‘It really does triumph over them all - even the outstanding 1969 Solti/Decca - and the triumph is, almost entirely, Schwarzkopf's own’, wrote Gramophone.

This comprehensive box set concludes with 3 CDs of Lieder, including the enduringly popular Four Last Songs sung by Charlotte Margiono and a disc of historical recordings accompanied by Richard Strauss on piano.

A truly unique set (the only one on the market!):The Richard Strauss Edition.

Contains a wealth of repertoire: the complete Orchestral Works, the complete Chamber Music, a generous selection of songs, the most famous operas and a disc of rare choral works.

A fitting tribute to one of the most important Late-Romantic composers, who for such a long period reflected his “Zeitgeist” in his fascinating and highly personal music.

A star studded line-up of famous Strauss interpreters: Rudolf Kempe and his Staatskapelle Dresden (a Strauss orchestra par excellence!), Herbert von Karajan, Joseph Keilberth, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Giuseppe Sinopoli, Karl Böhm, and vocalists Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Alessandra Marc, Deborah Voigt, Anne Sofie von Otter, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Charlotte Margiono.

Containing a historical recording of songs accompanied by Richard Strauss himself on the piano.

Liner notes included on CD-ROM.