In his acclaimed best-seller ‘The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century’ Alex Ross begins his study of modern music with Richard Strauss, well known to laymen for his Space Odyssey theme / late-Elvis overture ‘Also Sprach Zarathustra’. Ross was referring specifically to his 1906 opera ‘Salome’, a visceral exploration of expressionism’s most harrowing extremes that perfectly captured fin-de-siecle paranoia. The latest disc in Naxos’s ongoing Strauss series features orchestral excerpts from the German composer’s later, tamer stage productions, but there’s still enough violent brass and crazed dance whorls to satisfy those keen on his edgier sounds.
‘Der Rosenkavalier’ of 1910 remains his most beloved opera, a comedic romp inspired by the Viennese waltz, of which this orchestral suite packs in most of the hits. For those, like myself, who cannot tolerate full operas this is all one needs, a lush, gay riot, like carousing drunk on vintage Blue Nun. His Wagneresque postwar morality play ‘Die Frau ohne Schatten’ (‘The Woman Without a Shadow’) is, as the title implies, more ambivalent, alternating reflective calm with rich romantic flourishes, while the final ‘Symphonic Fragment from Josephs-Legende’ is equally bold and jarring. Fans of the more rough-hewn ballroom grit of Tom Waits and Tindersticks ought to see how it was done here first: the veneer may sparkle with all the lustre of a chandelier, but the lights conceal the idiosyncratic style of a true maverick.
by Joshua Meggitt
