Apollo's Fire / Sorrell - Don Quixote And Other Suites & Concertos - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Howard Shelley - Piano Concertos 1 & 2 / Capriccio Brillant [COMPACT DISCS] date 01/04/1994

During his long and exceptionally fruitful creative life, Richard Strauss (1864-1949) composed only a few works for the cello. Only three have survived and small as that number may seem, those cello works are critical to the composer's development. Daniel Muller-Schott sees the early Sonata for cello and piano op. 6 and the late tone poem InchDon QuixoteInch op. 35 as marking the path that was to lead Strauss within the space of a few years from Romanticism to the Modern era in music. The cellist highlights this watershed in Strauss's artistic development with his own transcriptions, expressly made for this album, of the Lieder InchZueignungInch op. 10/1 and InchIch trage meine MinneInch op. 32/1.

The five works that make up this recording were all inspired by Cervantes' masterpiece Don Quijote de la Mancha. Barbieri' incidental music was composed as part of the first official commemoration, in 1861, of the anniversary of Cervantes' death.