Strausshard / Bavarian Radio Sym Orch / Slatkin - Don Quixote - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Strausshard / Chicago Sym Orch - Don Quixote [COMPACT DISCS] date 01/11/2010

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.

Captured live in a gripping concert event dated 30 August 1964, at a point in time many consider the prime of his career or something very close to it, Herbert von Karajan here offers a dazzlingly powerful display of his mastery in music of Richard Strauss, specifically two of the composer's great tone poems, Don Quixote, op. 35 and Also Sprach Zarathustra, op. 30. He is ably aided by his soloists Rudolf Streng, violist, member of the Vienna Philharmonic, founding member of the reformed Barylli Quartett active during the decade of the 1950s, and later to be heard in the Vienna Philharmonic String Quartet, and French cellist Pierre Fournier, one of the greatest at his instrument in the 20th c., known as the Incharistocrat of cellistsInch in his lifetime for his lyricism and refinement. The Vienna Philharmonic, by this time fully rejuvenated from it's wartime decline, is in superb shape. In addition, von Karajan's Vienna recordings are treasured productions in a voluminous discography otherwise dominated by the Philharmonia and Berlin recordings.