The Program
RICHARD
STRAUSS
Tod und Verklärung, Op. 24
About the
Composer
As a composer, Richard Strauss couldn’t have been given a better start in life. His father was a celebrated horn player
who worked in the Bavarian Court Orchestra and played in the premiere of
Wagner’s Parsifal. But he was a
strict conservative and wanted his son Richard to follow a more respectable
path of pursuing Brahms and the great Austro-German tradition. But Richard was
a radical and preferred Wagner’s bold musical experiments. Composer Hans von
Bülow had christened him the third Richard (Wagner being the first, but having
no immediate successor). His friend Alexander Ritter, who was married to
Wagner’s niece, fostered those interests and encouraged Strauss to become a
more extreme musician. Strauss soon left behind the safety of lieder,
concertos, and symphonies and looked at more daring musical forms.
About
this Work
Tod und Verklärung (Death and
Transfiguration) is an
intoxicating tone poem, conceived in the vein of Liszt’s orchestral works and the shifting soundscapes of Wagner’s operas. With this piece, Strauss finally
shunned the seemingly sober abstraction of Brahms. Written between 1888 and
1889 (and premiered the following year), Strauss describes the final moments of
an artist’s life in music. The narrative—moving from deathbed, through the
struggle between life and death and, finally, the transfiguration itself—was
Strauss’s idea, though Ritter later created a poetic version of the story. The
piece follows a similar path to the final act of Wagner’s 1865 opera Tristan und Isolde, which ends with its own
“transfiguration,” though people have called Isolde’s great moment the
Liebestod (“love death”). Strauss continued to focus on the orchestral poem
throughout the 1890s, but the philosophical and poetic basis of Tod und
Verklärung points the way to his increasing love for the opera house.
What to
Listen For
Strauss, like Wagner and Mahler, uses a vast orchestra to investigate grand
musical concepts. Within Strauss’s operas—particularly Salome, Elektra, and the
later Die Frau ohne Schatten—he
pushed orchestral size to the limit. Such vast forces provide a rich palate of
sounds that create sonic variety over the 25-minute course of the piece. The
music around the artist’s deathbed is whispered and frail, with a
characteristically morbid timpani rumble. A second section, launched by a
sudden bruising crash, is more turbulent as a growling theme emerges in the
lower strings. Although there is great struggle, there is also terrific joy as
the artist’s life rushes before his eyes. The final section is a glorious
rhapsody, replete with fanfares and orchestral sunbursts.
—Gavin Plumley
© 2012 The Carnegie Hall Corporation
RICHARD
STRAUSS
Der Rosenkavalier Suite
Strauss, the
Opera Composer
Having distanced himself from his father and the conservative path of Brahms,
Strauss became the new radical of European music. Performances of his tone
poems Don Juan (1889), Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche (1894–1895),
Also sprach Zarathustra (1896),
Don Quixote (1897), and Ein Heldenleben (1897–1898) further
confirmed the audacious sound world of Death
and Transfiguration. At the same time, Strauss was beginning to experiment
with opera in an equally brave mold. In his first two stage works, Guntram (1894) and Feuersnot (1901), the orchestra plays a major role in exploring the
psychological undercurrents of the
story—something he had learned from Wagner’s music dramas. Although
neither of Strauss’s first operas was particularly successful, they laid the
groundwork for his riotous 1905 hit Salome.
The even more extreme tragedy of Elektra
followed in 1909. Having wowed with both tone poem and opera, Strauss was
crowned the true heir of Richard Wagner.
About Der
Rosenkavalier
Wagner had followed his brooding Tristan und Isolde with the
benevolent comedy Die Meistersinger von
Nürnberg. After Elektra, Strauss
and his librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal turned from the corrupt ancient world
to an equally warm-hearted comedy set in mid–18th- century Vienna. Der Rosenkavalier tells the story of the
Marschallin and her young lover Octavian. The Marschallin’s cousin Baron Ochs
is going to ask for the hand of the daughter of a new noble, and the
Marschallin sends Octavian with his proposal gift: a silver rose. Rather than
preparing the way for Ochs, however, the young Sophie falls for the dashing
Octavian. With passing similarities to Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro, the opera is, on the surface, a camp
confection. But Strauss’s psychological acuity created a parallel world in
which pain, loss, and the shifting sands of time feature prominently. The opera
is therefore the quintessence of bittersweet. It proved a huge success at its
premiere in Dresden in 1911, and the waltzes that run through the score have
become as popular as those written by the Viennese Strausses.
A Closer
Listen
Using an equally large orchestra as Death
and Transfiguration, Strauss creates a spinning sound world for Der
Rosenkavalier. The first passages of the suite (which Strauss created in 1944 in collaboration with
Polish conductor Artur Rodziński) are taken from the overture, describing the
Marschallin in bed with her young lover. A transitional passage leads to music
from the presentation of the rose in the second act. The silver love token is
described by a winsome theme, accompanied by metallic splashes in the flute,
piccolo, harp, and celesta. Octavian and Sophie’s love duet unfolds, but is
interrupted by the oafish Baron Ochs and his lilting waltz, with which Act II
ends. Subsequent yearning themes are derived from the Marschallin’s great
outpouring in the first act and the ravishing trio from the end of the opera.
Sophie and Octavian are eventually left alone with their delicate rose theme,
before Strauss concludes the suite with an even more rambunctious version of
one of the waltzes.
—Gavin
Plumley
© The Carnegie Hall Corporation
JOHANN
STRAUSS JR.
Overture to Die Fledermaus; Secunden Polka, Op. 258; Kaiser Waltz, Op. 437;
Csárdás from Die Fledermaus; Tritsch-Tratsch Polka, Op. 214; An der schönen,
blauen Donau Waltz, Op. 314
The Viennese
Dancing Dynasty
Johann Strauss I completely changed the face of popular music in Vienna. During
the early part of his career, the folksy Ländler, a triple-time dance from
Austria and Southern Germany, began to be played with more of a lilt. It had
popped into court entertainments at the end of the 18th century; by the
beginning of the 19th century, Schubert wrote down these dances, following a
new fad by calling them waltzes (after the German verb waltzen, “to dance”). Clutching his violin, Johann Strauss I played
these and other dances in restaurants and cafes, eventually becoming the
Imperial Ball Director. His position became cemented in society and music
history alike. From then on, the waltz meant Vienna.
About
these Dances
Like father, like sons. Johann Jr., Eduard, and Josef Strauss followed their
pioneering father into the entertainment business. But all three were much more
radical figures and embraced the liberal politics of their age, rather than
kowtowing to fusty imperialism. Their waltzes celebrated the morning papers,
technological advances, and the pretty girls of Vienna. Johann Strauss Jr. soon
outstripped his brothers and was crowned the new Imperial Ball Director. But
this constant triple-time world began to tire and, when composer Franz von
Suppé brought operetta to Vienna, Strauss Jr. wanted to try his hand at these
new musical comedies. Just as he had dominated the waltz, he became Vienna’s
new champion of the stage.
A
Closer Listen
The overture to Die Fledermaus, Strauss’s
1874 megahit operetta, is a typically fizzy showpiece, offering a riotous
encapsulation of the show’s maxim, “Happy is he who forgets what cannot be
changed.” If the opening gestures of the Secunden
Polka suggest a sober demeanour, that same chirruping tone soon takes over. But
there were more serious thoughts in Strauss’s mind when he wrote his Kaiser Waltz for concerts in Berlin in
1889. Beginning with a whispered march, the work soon sweeps into a terrific
series of double waltzes, proclaiming power and passion in turn. The waltz was
intended as a gesture of fellowship between the German Kaiser and Franz Josef
of Austria-Hungary. That other half of the Habsburg Emperor’s double crown
comes to the fore in the second act of Die
Fledermaus, as Rosalinde arrives as a Hungarian countess, leading an
increasingly tipsy Csárdás. But Viennese dances were no less colourful, and the
Tritsch-Tratsch Polka of 1858 is as
gossipy and effusive as its “chit-chat” title suggests. Finally, Strauss’s 1866
waltz An der schönen, blauen Donau
offers a more seraphic picture of Vienna. The dance now sounds across Austria
at midnight on New Year’s Eve, but it was written as a satirical chorus for a
male voice choir. The send-up—referencing Austria’s defeat in the
Austro-Prussian war—has faded, leaving a shimmering display of affection for
Vienna and the river that runs through it.
—Gavin Plumley
© 2012 The Carnegie Hall Corporation