Kent Nagano & Göteborgs Symfoniker - Strauss: Ein Heldenleben, Op. 40 & Tod und Verklärung, Op. 24 (2017)

Tracklist
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01. Ein Heldenleben, Op. 40, TrV 190: Der Held (The Hero)
02. Ein Heldenleben, Op. 40, TrV 190: Des Helden Widersacher (The Hero's Enemies)
03. Ein Heldenleben, Op. 40, TrV 190: Des Helden Gefährtin (The Hero's Companion)
04. Ein Heldenleben, Op. 40, TrV 190: Mäßig langsam
05. Ein Heldenleben, Op. 40, TrV 190: Des Helden Walstatt (The Hero's Field of Battle)
06. Ein Heldenleben, Op. 40, TrV 190: Festes Zeitmaß (sehr lebhaft)
07. Ein Heldenleben, Op. 40, TrV 190: Mit großem Schwung und Begeisterung
08. Ein Heldenleben, Op. 40, TrV 190: Des Helden Friedenswerke (The Hero's Works of Peace)
09. Ein Heldenleben, Op. 40, TrV 190: Des Helden Weltflucht und Vollendung (The Hero's Withdrawal from the World)
10. Ein Heldenleben, Op. 40, TrV 190: Langsam
11. Tod und Verklärung, Op. 24, TrV 158: Largo
12. Tod und Verklärung, Op. 24, TrV 158: Allegro molto agitato
13. Tod und Verklärung, Op. 24, TrV 158: Meno mosso, ma sempre alla breve
14. Tod und Verklärung, Op. 24, TrV 158: A tempo primo
15. Tod und Verklärung, Op. 24, TrV 158: Moderato


In this new production of one of the most often-recorded orchestral works, Kent Nagano has chosen what is for him a characteristic approach: The life path of the hero Richard Strauss is not presented in a superficial and obvious way, reduced to purely illustrative program music that owes its effects to the overwhel- ming power of an enormous orchestral apparatus. Instead, Nagano and the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra seek out the nuances, the compositional and tonal details – and reveal the brokenness experienced by the hero, the inner emotions, perceptions, and self-doubt found beneath the surface of the score, which often tends to be interpreted one-dimensionally.

The great violin solo that is a portrayal of Strauss’s wife Pauline is usually performed by the (mostly male) first concertmasters of the major orchestras. But here Sara Trobäck, First Concertmaster of the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, offers an unexpectedly different, feminine view of “The Hero’s Companion.”

When we hear the final phase of the life path traversed by Strauss’s “hero,” Nagano’s interpretation reveals to us not only the idealized late Romantic idiom in which the 34-year-old composer cast his two main characters. We also discover in the score the brokenness of the elder Strauss when, after the end of the Third Reich and having passed his eightieth year, he experienced his own catharsis and transfiguration.

It thus ties in perfectly with the tone poem Death and Transfiguration, in which Richard Strauss and Kent Nagano tell us a very similar human story.

The third part of the Strauss cycle will feature Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks and the Symphonia Domestica and is planned for release in autumn 2018.

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