Search - Richard Strauss :: Richard Strauss: Ein Heldenleben / Tod Und Verklarung

The reference Strauss

ken yong | Kuala Lumpur | 04/13/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"At budget price, this is the best Strauss to grab. The other recordings I've heard are the brilliant and unheard Benjamin Zander with the New England Conservatory Orchestra and Karl Bohm's direction under the same orchestra. You can download the Zander recording at his website and this is another recommendation because the youth orchestra under Zander is unbelievable, particularly the ruthlessly ****ed up trumpet parts of The Hero's Battlefield. Karl Bohm's Ein Heldenleben is fine, but the Battlefield was severely flawed and the Dresden players could not cope with the movement until Kempe directs them again in this recording.Kempe is a remarkable Straussian in his own right. While Reiner is about precision and control, Karajan with the lushness of Straussian tone and Bohm the fineness, Kempe, in my humble opinion, is possess the qualities of Reiner and Bohm. The Dance of Seven Veils is the best I've heard without middle-eastern exaggeration that other conductors employed, yet under Kempe, the Dance mesmerises still with sensuality. Ein Heldenleben is my least favorite of Strauss' compositions, because of it's too much excessiveness after the Hero's Battlefield. Suffice to say, Kempe directed Ein Heldenleben flawlessly.The gem of this CD is one of the most emotional of Strauss' compositions, Tod Und Verlarung, seering with white-hot intensity. If you're contemplating your first Richard Strauss CD, make sure to pick this recording."

Strauss played with delicacy and integrity

Santa Fe Listener | Santa Fe, NM USA | 07/02/2006

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Rudolf Kempe gained his greatest fame with his EMI recordings of Richard Strauss, and here the main work, Ein Heldenleben from 1972, is generously filled out with Salome's Dance of the Seven Veils and Death and Transfiguration, a total of 75 min. The original LPs and earlier CD issues didn't have the best sound, but in this new remastering the old murkiness is cleaned up and they sound very good.



Salome's dance is played at the polar opposite of Karajan's sensuousness, which was drunk on its erotic allure. Kempe's way--and this is what his admirers adore--is to bring delicacy and integrity to Strauss, avoiding all excess. But I think avoiding eroticism in Salome's dance, of all pieces, is right. The Dresden orchestra plays with its usual refined understatement, totally in accord with Kempe.



Death and Transfiguration combines religiosity with a lurid deathbed scene that invites us to eavesdrop on every twitch and gasp of a dying man before he is filled with divine illumination at the end. Here, Kempe's chasteness seems more appropriate. Don't expect the tension and trhills of Karajan or Bruno Walter in his classic mono reading on Sony--we are closer to Haitink's style of Strauss playing.



If anything, the Heldenleben is even more low-key (the Gramophone's word is 'aristocratic') than what precedes it. British critics are embarrassed by Strauss's unalloyed paean to himself, but great recordings by Beecham, Karajan and, quiqte recently, Simon Rattle confirm that Strauss wnated the conductor to pull out all the stops--Heldenleben is one of Strauss's most exciting thrill rides. If you don't agree, neither does Kempe, whose hero has half the swagger and twice the reticence of any reading I've ever heard. BTW the remastering engineers worked the least magic with this recording, which has always been a little tubby and blurred.



Sadly, if you dare to criticize a recording that "everybody knows" is the best, Amazon readers slash you for it, but I'm giving my genuine response to these accounts, which I've known and lived with for thirty years."

Kempe, Dresden, and Strauss were made for each other.

J Scott Morrison | Middlebury VT, USA | 01/28/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This is a re-release, remastered (but I can't hear much change in the sound from earlier versions), of these wonderful recordings. They truly are great performances. Kempe and the Dresden Staatkapelle seemed to have a way with Strauss that never failed him. If you don't have earlier incarnations of these performances, this is your chance to grab them at a bargain price. This is, without doubt, my favorite recording of Ein Heldenleben, better than Karajan's, although I wouldn't want to be without it, either."