Aus Italien

First of all, Strauss has suddenly to renounce the huge overloaded orchestra of Salome, Electra, and Rosenkavalier, and to supplant it by a much smaller one designed for a transparent texture of chamber music.

in any case the definitive ariadne of noxus is a real achievement and stands among strauss's better and more memorable accomplishments in the estimation of the present writer the tenderer romantic portions of the piece excel the comic pages associated with zurbanetta and her merry crew in writing these the composer aimed to be mozartean or if one prefers by assigning the colorature soprano a florid rondo of incredible difficulties so mercilessly exacting indeed that it first moved hofmannsthal to discreet protest eventually the composer took steps to modify some of the cruel problems of zerbinetta's solo and it is in this amended form that one generally hears this air to-day when it is sung as a concert number it would not be altogether excessive to claim that ariodneovnoxus marks a midpoint in strauss's career he still had a long and fruitful life ahead of him and as it was to prove he was almost incorrigibly prolific not hesitating to experiment with one type of composition as well as another on the eve of the first world war he became interested in diaghilev's russian ballet and the various types of choreographic and scenic art which it was to engender hoffmannsal wanted him to occupy his imagination and to let the vision of one of the grandest episodes of antique tragedy namely the subject of orestes and the furies inspire you to write a symphonic poem which might be a synthesis of your symphonies and your two tragic operas and the poet adjured him to think of orestes as represented by nijinsky the greatest mimic genius on the stage to-day but apparently strauss had had his fill of the elektra tragedy at this stage and had no stomach for more of this sort of thing whether symphonic or operatic so he remained unmoved by hofmannsthal's urgings yet the russian ballet gave him a new idea he thought of a pantomimic ballet conceived in the shapes and colours of the epoch of paolo veronese from this conception based on a scenario by a count harry kessler and von hofmannsthal dealing with the story of joseph and potiphar's wife there grew the legend of joseph first produced in paris with extraordinary scenic and decorative accoutrements on may fourteenth nineteen fourteen the stage was a pictorial triumph which though the ballet was several times performed elsewhere appears never to have been anything like the visual feast it was at its first showing the score seems to have missed fire and has never been reckoned among the composer's major exploits none the less the effect of the music in its proper frame and context is compelling what if much of it sounds like discarded leavings from salome strauss confessed that from the first the pious joseph bored him and i have difficulty in finding music for whatever bores me was to his dear da ponte as he came to call hoffmannsthal he gave hope and said frankly that though the virtuous biblical youth tried his patience in the end some holy strain might perhaps occur to him the present writer has always felt that the joseph lagenda is a far too maligned work and that it would repay a conductor to disentomb the grossly slandered score which when properly presented is striking theatre on october twenty eighth nineteen fifteen there was heard in berlin under the composer's direction the first symphony in contradiction to tone poem richard strauss had written since eighteen eighty six like aus italien it was again outspokenly pictorial the composer himself wrote titles into the divisions of the score which he is said to have begun to sketch in nineteen eleven though the music was set down to the final double bar four years later some spoke of the alpin symphony as a work which a child could understand and the various scenic divisions of this alpine panorama distended as it undoubtedly is can be described as plainly pictorial the orchestra depicts successively night sunrise the ascent entrance into the forest wandering beside the brook at the waterfall apparition on flowery meadows on the alm lost in the thicket on the glacier dangerous moment on the summit mists arise the sun is gradually hidden elegy calm before the storm thunderstorm the descent sunset night on account of its length the alpine symphony has never been a favorite among strauss's achievements of toned painting indeed it may be questioned whether its sunrise scene can be compared for suggestiveness and purely musical thrill to the glorious opening picture of also sprach strass's symphonic excursion in the alps was succeeded by a return to opera between nineteen fourteen and nineteen seventeen which is to say during the most poignant years of the first war he busied himself with a work which was to become a child of sorrow to him but which to a number of his staunchest worshippers often passes as one of his very finest achievements die frau ohne schatten the woman without a shadow first performed under frank schalk in vienna october tenth nineteen nineteen for all the enthusiasm it evokes in some of the inner straussian circles this opera which combines length breadth and thickness is a real problem the writer of these lines who has been exposed to the work fully half a dozen times always with a firm resolve to enjoy it has never succeeded in his ambition though strauss and hofmannsthal discussed the plans for the piece in nineteen twelve and once more in nineteen fourteen the first act was not finished till that year and war held up the completion of the opera three years more it has been maintained that die fraunschatten marks the combination of a recitative style with the forms of the older opera and that in it strauss has yielded to a mystical tendency villibrando claims that hofmannsthal's libretto attracted the composer and stimulated him precisely because of its obscurity that he saw in it a series of problems to be clarified not to say unveiled in their complexities precisely through the agency of music the question of motherhood lies at the root of the opera hofmannsthal saw in his poem a kind of continuation of the magic flute on one hand we have the superterrestrial worlds on another the realistic scenes of the human world bound together by the demonic figure of the nurse and a new element is to be sensed in the score the powerful hymn-like character of the music overpoweringly disclosed in the music a new feature in strauss's compositions it may be questioned whether strauss was truly content with the bloodless symbolism which fills the woman without a shadow in any case at this juncture he began to long for something new somehow hofmannsthal did not at that moment appear to be reacting sympathetically to the dramatic demands which just then seemed to be filling strauss's mind he informed hofmannsthal that he longed for something to compose like schnitzler's libeli or schreib's glass of water he asked for characters inviting composition characters like the marchionne ox or barrack in die frau ohne schatten and so when hofmannsthal did not respond promptly he took up the pen to work out his own salvation the consequence was intermezzo a domestic comedy in one act with symphonic interludes it was produced at the dresden opera november fourth nineteen twenty four under fritz busch two years before that strauss had presented in vienna a two-act viennese ballet schlaggeburs whipped cream which can be dismissed as one of his outspoken failures as for intermezzo it had biographical vibrations in that it pictured a domestic episode in strauss's own experiences it had to do with the conductor robert storch and thus strauss could make amusing stage use of the unmistakable initials rs and make various allusions to the game of scat which had for years been a favorite diversion of his The music of intermezzo has never been acclaimed a product of the greater Strauss, and yet Alfred Lorenz, famous for his series of eviscerating studies of the structural problems of Wagner's music dramas, has made it clear that the Wagnerian form problems are likewise the principles which underlie such a relatively tenuous Straussian score as intermezzo.

in spite of the dubious fortunes which were to dog the steps of an opera like the woman without a shadow the composer once again allowed himself to be seduced by a work of relatively similar character egyptian helen a somewhat tortured mythical tale based on a rather far-fetched magic fiction by von hofmannsthal related to a phase of the trojan war in which helen is shown as wholly innocent of the ancient struggle magic befuddlements potions capable of changing The characteristics of people, drafts which rob this or that personage of his memory, an omniscient shell which launches oracular pronouncements, and a good deal more of the sort, lend a singular character to the strange fantasy in which some have chosen to discern a kind of take-off on the various drinks of forgetfulness and such in Tristan and Guter Demerund.

egyptian helen is the only sample of this strange stage of the strauss who was reaching the frontiers of old age which american music lovers had the opportunity to know it would be excessive to claim that either in europe or in the western hemisphere the work was a noticeable addition to the enduring accomplishments of the master more than one began to obtain the impression that for all the splendors of his technique strauss seemed to be going to seed in the summer of nineteen twenty nine hofmannsthal suddenly died some time before he had written a short novel lucidor about an impoverished family with two marriageable daughters for whom an attempt is made to secure wealthy husbands to facilitate the marital stratagem one of the daughters is dressed in boys clothes the disguised girl falls in love with the suitor of her sister arabella to whom one mandraka a romantic balkan youth of great wealth pays court the period is the year eighteen sixty the scene vienna inevitably arabella turned out to be something of a throwback into the scene if not the glamorous period or milieu of Der Rosenkavalier.

Next time on APM SymphonyCast, violinist Janine Jansson joins the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and conductor Antonio Pappano for the sweeping violin concerto in D major by Brahms.

And then Richard Strauss takes us on a musical journey through Italy in his colorful tone poem Aus Italien.

I'm Steve Seale.

That's next time on APM's