To my knowledge, there is a modern recording of the "Japanese Festival Music" on RUclips (it doesn't credit the performers, though). Embarassing, yes. Absolutely lush and beautiful, also yes.
Just listen to a bit of it on RUclips blurch! I didn’t get very far. I really love your channel by the way I’ve been listening to it for three years now discovered i! lockdown and it got me through most of it. Keep it up! What I love most about it is that you throw the attention back onto the actual work and the actual result thats on the CD. And cut through a lot of the marketing stuff .as opposed to being painted into a corner by only listening to the “one” recording!
There's a recording with Ashkenazy/Czech Phil that can be found here on RUclips! I don't know if it was available on CD at some point. t's hardly the best Strauss piece, but not as bad as people say, I think.
I have the disc! The sound and playing is great, but unfortunately the performances of the couplings (Also sprach Zarathustra and Till Eulenspiegel) are pretty dull.
Not Richard Strauss, but in a list of compositions by Max Reger is Eine vaterländische Ouvertüre of 1915 (in WW1) which was only recorded once during WW2; nobody seems interested in recording it now, it seems.
Thanks Dave for reminding us of this hidden treasure, this marvelous piece of music. Once again I have to say: there are a myriad of composers who do with the orchestra what they can, and then there is this Richard Strauss who does with the orchestra whatever he wants to do! What a hilarious piece of music! Have you already made a video about Strauss' ballet for Djaghilev's Ballets Russes - Josephslegende?
And a modern version of Pizzetti's input Symphony, probably the most eloquent of the pieces the Japanese DID accept, is available on Naxos. Pretty good in that it does not try to coat everything in saccharine - if one tries, there's some of the wartime anxiety and sense of awe to be discerned, as well as enough modernity to make it compelling.
There's a modern recording of this piece, Czech Philharmonic and Vladimir Ashkenazy in 1990, lasting 15:47. I found the info under the youtube vid's description. The 14 gongs and the brass alike are underwhelming sadly.
I had it confused with the Festliches Präludium which has been recorded. I had a dim memory of having seen it recorded on an obscure label somewhere, but I guess not! Thanks Dave for this video
never heard of it, but it's quite attractive -- surging Wagnerian waves -- lyrical tunes -- dramatic fanfares and marches -- cherryblossom bit is schmaltzy -- volcano ear-splitting! Valkyries meet Thor -- lively contrapuntal ado must be the samurai -- then some dull rumpty-tump -- and the imperial hymn is a lurching cadential sequence that goes all over the place and can never come to rest, as if being played on a ship in a storm.
Listening to the Strauss conducted recording now, and the music does not evoke Japan at all. A highly romantic piece to my ears, in the German tradition. Have not heard any gongs so far, and I'm near the end already
I was curious so I listened (there's a performance on YoutTube with score) It's way way. over the top! Section 19 when it suddenly becomes contrapuntal is quite interesting, but the final section - oh dear all those massive tutti octaves/chords and then end with the gongs! :>( I'm sure RS did it for the fee!
Despite the absolute depravity surrounding every aspect of it (and this comes from an expat in Asia, one familiar with Japanese atrocities there), it is yet pleasant and enjoyable. True giftedness is difficult to supress. This is not unlike The Barber of Seville which I find far more listenable when ignoring the dumb plot.
Interesting video, thanks. I thought that the first prize would have gone to the Festliches Präludium, but now I am really curious to hear this one! For the same occasion, the Italian composer in charge was Pizzetti, who composed the really interesting Symphony in A (I remember you have not given a so high vote in the web-site reviews, but I like it very much 😊).
According to the CD documentation, "Entartete Musik" (on POOL), Strauss allegedly composed this in order to save his daughter-in-law. There are no sources mentioned, though. It sounds quite naive, but in exchange for the work, the Japanese Ambassador was to get assurance from the German government not to diffame her as Jewish.
I have read or heard this too. Towards the end of the war the Gestapo issued an arrest warrant for Alice Strauss but a family friend in the Garmisch police department reportedly kept moving it to the bottom of their To Do pile. Strauss WAS quite naive: supposedly he drove up to the gate of Therisienstadt announcing he was Dr Richard Strauss and he wish to see his daughter-in-law's family members who were there and the guards told the crazy old man to beat it.
i wish to formally nominate America and Japan “werent getting along well in 1940” for understatement of the century if it please the committee, thank you.
That would make a nice 2 disc set. I'd also like to see a set containing ALL of the pieces Koussevitzky commissioned for the 50th anniversary of the Boston Symphony.
@@DavesClassicalGuide I do. However, it's such an obvious choice that it's certainly tempting to avoid it and look elsewhere. Also, the main focus your channel is not the politics of music. The Olympic Hymn Can be discarded easily without making any reference to the music itself. Which is neither very interesting nor very instructive. So i see the merits of avoiding it. That being said: When i think of Richard Strauss and embarrassment, for me it's the Olympic Hymn hymn. Maybe Strauss thought that way, took ...
... Besides: In terms of embarrassment, Strauss is an interesting case, i think. My gut feeling tells me that when he made his artistic choices, he was very aware of the danger of embarrassment, but at the time didn't shy away from it. Which may have been an important ingredient in the creation of his more successful pieces ... The Alpine Symphony isn't embarrassing, but it very easily could have been (and a few folks probably think that it actually is) ...
Hmm. This sounds like the beginning of a new series. I'd also like to hear a modern recording of this piece. Strauss's most embarrassing opera is surely Friedenstag with the final solo and choral celebration like the end of Fidelio on a combination of steroids and crack.
I totally agree. I forgot that I have a recording of this turkey, and the one Dave mentions above. I blame Pauline for these misplaced clumsy commissions.
A performance is on the Web, and even if it is good it delineates that this work sounds more like a soundtrack to a travelogue than a work worthy for the concert hall. It is an unfortunate coincidence that the gangster regime in Japan at the time was butchering so many Chinese, which makes Britten's Sinfonia da Requiem ironically more fitting even if it doesn't sound at all Japanese. Britten's work stands on its own, and on the whole Richard Strauss' oeuvre seems to be on the fade. I have no desire to hear this work again. "Eighty Years of Peace" will be more fitting as a celebratory basis of music. I say this because I won't likely be around for a "Century of Peace".
Dave, I withdraw my previous comments with apologies. I went back and listened to Aus Italien again. (First time in years). Also, the correct spelling is "Funiculi, Funicula!"
I once began listening to the Strauss Melodrama for Voice and Piano, Enoch Arden,op 38. It was the Jon Vickers/Marc-Andre Hamelin recording (there is another with Glenn Gould and Claude Rains), and I started laughing, but as it went on and on, I became quite distressed, and find it one of the most awful things on record. Does anyone actually like this? I think it is embarrassing.
Well, but that was the whole point of a melodrama - to make people uneasy and emotional, and have them pondering things. Music would act as an emotional trigger or illustration, but subservient to the text. And, I guess, people understood true emotions a little differently then, especially before the wars that brought sad sobriety upon many. Until then, emotional overdrive was "required" in telling about missteps and tragedies of human life. :) I would look at an opus like this one as an original "audiobook". Have it in the Gould version, quite fitting in the hands of that idiosyncratic musician .
Love this series Dave! Any Chance we can hear about Strauss' Festliches Präludium, Beethoven Consecration of the House or Brahms Rinaldo in this series?
Even more embarrassing, if it were true and proven by independent sources, would be the news that the Metamorphosen for 23 solo strings, was once, in a early version as a sketch, called In memoriam Adolf H, a rumour spread by the Dutch musicologist Marius Flothuis.
Personally Dave, I think Elgar's "March of the Mogul Emperors" should be shoved under the rug, even though it enjoys its reputation as Elgar's greatest work ...
Never heard (of) it. Otherwise I'd have put my money on the shameless Symphonia Domestica - though the 'Bathing the Baby in the Bidet' interlude is not without a degree of poignancy.
R. Strauss' output, although I love his music, is highly irregular, alternating some really great pieces of genius, with , as Dave puts it, mindless Schlock :)
Hey again, Dave! This is perhaps the old Strauss recording, IDK, but if so, the sound seems to have been cleaned up alot. If it's not, and you haven't already discovered this yet, here you go (it's actually pretty good Strauss, I think?):
I would not wish this experiment on Kuchar (if that's who you meant), although he quite possible would manage to make the piece "work". Hey, what about Ted Currentzis instead?.. Now there's a piece he could pull around to his heart's content! :)
To my knowledge, there is a modern recording of the "Japanese Festival Music" on RUclips (it doesn't credit the performers, though). Embarassing, yes. Absolutely lush and beautiful, also yes.
If it’s the one where it shows the score with black background, someone in its comments credits Ashkenazy and the Czech Phil. It is a lot of fun.
There's one with the Bavarian State Orchestra with Strauss conducting on youtube.
I've been looking under musical rugs all my life, and some of the dust bunnies have been relevatory, others have just been dirt.
Just checked it on RUclips - it sounds good! Thanks for sharing Mr. Hurwitz
Just listen to a bit of it on RUclips blurch! I didn’t get very far. I really love your channel by the way I’ve been listening to it for three years now discovered i! lockdown and it got me through most of it. Keep it up! What I love most about it is that you throw the attention back onto the actual work and the actual result thats on the CD. And cut through a lot of the marketing stuff .as opposed to being painted into a corner by only listening to the “one” recording!
There's a recording with Ashkenazy/Czech Phil that can be found here on RUclips! I don't know if it was available on CD at some point. t's hardly the best Strauss piece, but not as bad as people say, I think.
I have the disc! The sound and playing is great, but unfortunately the performances of the couplings (Also sprach Zarathustra and Till Eulenspiegel) are pretty dull.
Exton OVCL-00195
I checked out the Ashkenazy recording. It's not a great piece, but it's nothing to be ashamed of either.
Not Richard Strauss, but in a list of compositions by Max Reger is Eine vaterländische Ouvertüre of 1915 (in WW1) which was only recorded once during WW2; nobody seems interested in recording it now, it seems.
Just saw this. And I thought you'd be talking about the Parergon on the Sinfonia Domestica.
Dave: there's this site called RUclips. It's there. Held my attention for 20 secs and I'm a Strauss fan. Really captures the Austrian atmosphere.
I said it was there.
Thanks Dave for reminding us of this hidden treasure, this marvelous piece of music. Once again I have to say: there are a myriad of composers who do with the orchestra what they can, and then there is this Richard Strauss who does with the orchestra whatever he wants to do! What a hilarious piece of music!
Have you already made a video about Strauss' ballet for Djaghilev's Ballets Russes - Josephslegende?
Quite the find! And I was thinking sinfonia Domestica- which I actually like 😎
So do I.
Sounds like a combination of his own "Festlisches Praludium" and Liszt's "Hunnenschlacht."
I have that very same Strauss conducts himself set on DG that you show. I never paid any attention to the piece so didn't even know I had it.
The Ibert piece is on an older EMI recording of several of his works, and it's bombastic fun.
And a modern version of Pizzetti's input Symphony, probably the most eloquent of the pieces the Japanese DID accept, is available on Naxos. Pretty good in that it does not try to coat everything in saccharine - if one tries, there's some of the wartime anxiety and sense of awe to be discerned, as well as enough modernity to make it compelling.
Even Karl Anton Rickenbacher did not touch it in his Unknown Richard Strauss series. You would think he might have slipped it in, but nope.
There was a recording with Ashkenazy and the czech philharmonic orchestra on Exton.
Well, David. that was a real surprise. I had never heard of the work before. I was expecting to hear you say the Domestic Symphony.
There's a modern recording of this piece, Czech Philharmonic and Vladimir Ashkenazy in 1990, lasting 15:47. I found the info under the youtube vid's description. The 14 gongs and the brass alike are underwhelming sadly.
Yes, I should have mentioned it Not very good. Thanks for the reminder.
I had it confused with the Festliches Präludium which has been recorded. I had a dim memory of having seen it recorded on an obscure label somewhere, but I guess not! Thanks Dave for this video
There's a concert recording on the Berlin Phil and Tielemann on the Digital Concert Hall archive. You have to subscribe to get access.
never heard of it, but it's quite attractive -- surging Wagnerian waves -- lyrical tunes -- dramatic fanfares and marches -- cherryblossom bit is schmaltzy -- volcano ear-splitting! Valkyries meet Thor -- lively contrapuntal ado must be the samurai -- then some dull rumpty-tump -- and the imperial hymn is a lurching cadential sequence that goes all over the place and can never come to rest, as if being played on a ship in a storm.
In case you haven't already done this one, I would love to hear you discuss Strauss's Salome...recordings as well as the opera itself.
Listening to the Strauss conducted recording now, and the music does not evoke Japan at all. A highly romantic piece to my ears, in the German tradition. Have not heard any gongs so far, and I'm near the end already
Having listened on RUclips it seems to me that this would make excellent film music, perhaps uncredited
There should be a recording by Ashkenazy. I imagine I once saw the cd (maybe, the label was Exton?), but didn't buy it because of a ridiculous price.
I was curious so I listened (there's a performance on YoutTube with score) It's way way. over the top! Section 19 when it suddenly becomes contrapuntal is quite interesting, but the final section - oh dear all those massive tutti octaves/chords and then end with the gongs! :>( I'm sure RS did it for the fee!
I found a RUclips performance with the score, apparently by the Czech Phil and Ashkenazy.
Yes. It was on CD too--I didn't remember it.
Dave, let’s put together a band and perform it. You can do the first tam tam part.
His "Schlagobers" is embarrassingly bad too.
Despite the absolute depravity surrounding every aspect of it (and this comes from an expat in Asia, one familiar with Japanese atrocities there), it is yet pleasant and enjoyable. True giftedness is difficult to supress. This is not unlike The Barber of Seville which I find far more listenable when ignoring the dumb plot.
Interesting video, thanks. I thought that the first prize would have gone to the Festliches Präludium, but now I am really curious to hear this one!
For the same occasion, the Italian composer in charge was Pizzetti, who composed the really interesting Symphony in A (I remember you have not given a so high vote in the web-site reviews, but I like it very much 😊).
According to the CD documentation, "Entartete Musik" (on POOL), Strauss allegedly composed this in order to save his daughter-in-law. There are no sources mentioned, though. It sounds quite naive, but in exchange for the work, the Japanese Ambassador was to get assurance from the German government not to diffame her as Jewish.
That’s quite an interesting and painful perspective. I wish I will found those sources someday.
I have read or heard this too. Towards the end of the war the Gestapo issued an arrest warrant for Alice Strauss but a family friend in the Garmisch police department reportedly kept moving it to the bottom of their To Do pile. Strauss WAS quite naive: supposedly he drove up to the gate of Therisienstadt announcing he was Dr Richard Strauss and he wish to see his daughter-in-law's family members who were there and the guards told the crazy old man to beat it.
Just think of all the orchestra parts sitting in a library or warehouse waiting to be played ! And all the labor of copying the parts and scores.
i wish to formally nominate America and Japan “werent getting along well in 1940” for understatement of the century if it please the committee, thank you.
I could see this as part of a concert program including the Britten and maybe another work commissioned by the Japanese for the same occasion.
That would make a nice 2 disc set. I'd also like to see a set containing ALL of the pieces Koussevitzky commissioned for the 50th anniversary of the Boston Symphony.
What's yourfavs by R. Strauss?
Have a look at the Strauss playlist.
Hey, what're about Taiillefer !
Not even close.
Dave, am i getting this right? You do not consider the hymn he wrote for Hitler's 1936 Olympics Strauss's most embarassing work?
Do you?
@@DavesClassicalGuide I do. However, it's such an obvious choice that it's certainly tempting to avoid it and look elsewhere. Also, the main focus your channel is not the politics of music. The Olympic Hymn Can be discarded easily without making any reference to the music itself. Which is neither very interesting nor very instructive. So i see the merits of avoiding it. That being said: When i think of Richard Strauss and embarrassment, for me it's the Olympic Hymn hymn. Maybe Strauss thought that way, took ...
... Besides: In terms of embarrassment, Strauss is an interesting case, i think. My gut feeling tells me that when he made his artistic choices, he was very aware of the danger of embarrassment, but at the time didn't shy away from it. Which may have been an important ingredient in the creation of his more successful pieces ... The Alpine Symphony isn't embarrassing, but it very easily could have been (and a few folks probably think that it actually is) ...
Such as me.....
Hmm. This sounds like the beginning of a new series.
I'd also like to hear a modern recording of this piece. Strauss's most embarrassing opera is surely Friedenstag with the final solo and choral celebration like the end of Fidelio on a combination of steroids and crack.
I totally agree. I forgot that I have a recording of this turkey, and the one Dave mentions above. I blame Pauline for these misplaced clumsy commissions.
I too listened to the piece on RUclips. Seemed OK. I'm not a huge Strauss fan.
A performance is on the Web, and even if it is good it delineates that this work sounds more like a soundtrack to a travelogue than a work worthy for the concert hall. It is an unfortunate coincidence that the gangster regime in Japan at the time was butchering so many Chinese, which makes Britten's Sinfonia da Requiem ironically more fitting even if it doesn't sound at all Japanese. Britten's work stands on its own, and on the whole Richard Strauss' oeuvre seems to be on the fade. I have no desire to hear this work again.
"Eighty Years of Peace" will be more fitting as a celebratory basis of music. I say this because I won't likely be around for a "Century of Peace".
A "Communist Manifesto" oratorio?
Of course they couldn't release it.
Turaskin would have trashed it in the Times.
Sounds like it would go well on a program with Khachaturian's Symphony No 2 The Bell.
It does.
John Wilson to the rescue?
I was thinking it might be "Aus Italien." Saved from total worthlessness by "Finiculi, Finicula."
The first movement is gorgeous.
Dave, I withdraw my previous comments with apologies. I went back and listened to
Aus Italien again. (First time in years). Also, the correct spelling is "Funiculi, Funicula!"
I once began listening to the Strauss Melodrama for Voice and Piano, Enoch Arden,op 38. It was the Jon Vickers/Marc-Andre Hamelin recording (there is another with Glenn Gould and Claude Rains), and I started laughing, but as it went on and on, I became quite distressed, and find it one of the most awful things on record. Does anyone actually like this? I think it is embarrassing.
Well, but that was the whole point of a melodrama - to make people uneasy and emotional, and have them pondering things. Music would act as an emotional trigger or illustration, but subservient to the text. And, I guess, people understood true emotions a little differently then, especially before the wars that brought sad sobriety upon many. Until then, emotional overdrive was "required" in telling about missteps and tragedies of human life. :) I would look at an opus like this one as an original "audiobook". Have it in the Gould version, quite fitting in the hands of that idiosyncratic musician .
I find the Magic Flute by Mozart embarrassing because of it's absurd and childish story but for some reason many people think it is profound.
Love this series Dave! Any Chance we can hear about Strauss' Festliches Präludium, Beethoven Consecration of the House or Brahms Rinaldo in this series?
No need to be embarrassed about the Consecration of the House overture.
Even more embarrassing, if it were true and proven by independent sources, would be the news that the Metamorphosen for 23 solo strings, was once, in a early version as a sketch, called In memoriam Adolf H, a rumour spread by the Dutch musicologist Marius Flothuis.
That’s already been debunked. The ‘In Memoriam’ seems to refer to the destruction of European culture.
Matthijs Vermeulen, not Marius Flothuis.
Makes for an interesting comparison with John Williams' "Sound the Bells," plus, you know, nazis. 😏
Personally Dave, I think Elgar's "March of the Mogul Emperors" should be shoved under the rug, even though it enjoys its reputation as Elgar's greatest work ...
Reputation?? I think you need a quorum for that.
Never heard (of) it. Otherwise I'd have put my money on the shameless Symphonia Domestica - though the 'Bathing the Baby in the Bidet' interlude is not without a degree of poignancy.
R. Strauss' output, although I love his music, is highly irregular, alternating some really great pieces of genius, with , as Dave puts it, mindless Schlock :)
@@pauloqueiroz9611 Schlockobers-Walzer, anyone?
Hey again, Dave! This is perhaps the old Strauss recording, IDK, but if so, the sound seems to have been cleaned up alot. If it's not, and you haven't already discovered this yet, here you go (it's actually pretty good Strauss, I think?):
Let's get Ted Kutcher to record it...he would make a good one 👍
I would not wish this experiment on Kuchar (if that's who you meant), although he quite possible would manage to make the piece "work". Hey, what about Ted Currentzis instead?.. Now there's a piece he could pull around to his heart's content! :)
I was thinking something like "Schlagobers", but this sounds like a good call.
What a great idea for a new series! Maybe Wagner's Apostles comes next...
Heard the piece just now, sounded like a pretentious propaganda bs, basically.