Although I doubt it will apply to many visitors to this site, I do envy listeners and collectors encountering this repertoire for the first time. Personally, I do not find any Romantic orchestral music to be more exultant than some of the passages found in the great Strauss Tone Poems. And for the new collector on a limited budget to be able to have this pair of discs in superb sound performed by the orchestra with the ultimate Strauss pedigree at around £10.00 is almost too good to be true. But hang on a minute, the choice is more complicated than that – the bargain back catalogue is groaning with classic versions at knock-down prices, and the discerning collector digging around on the internet can find alternative superlative versions be they the blazing George Szell on Sony, Kempe (with the same orchestra as here) originally on EMI now under licence in a superb 9 disc set from Brilliant Classics for around £23.00 or a rather chaste modern view from Zinman and his Zurich Tonhalle players with 7 discs for about £20.00.
I’m an unrepentant OCSD – Obsessive Compulsive Strauss disorder
– sufferer, similar to OCWD (the W is for Wagner) but with considerably
less unpleasant social stigma attached. So I’ve all of those
versions in my collection together with far too many others
as well. So, do I need another version? – a clear no; but does
this pair of discs add to my knowledge of the works? – a resounding
yes. Havergal Brian, in his capacity as reviewer/columnist for
Musical Opinion in 1937, wrote about a concert the Dresden Orchestra
under Strauss gave at the Queen’s Hall; “the reason the Strauss
works were played so glowingly, with such marvellous clarity,
every bit of solo work given with ease and elasticity, is that
the mentality of the Dresdeners dominates their technique.”
I can lift that quote from 1937 and apply it here to perfection.
To this day they have retained a uniquely lean powerful and
distinctive sound. However, the political schisms of post-War
Europe did mean that personnel of the orchestra from the 1940s
through to the late-1980s remained resolutely Germanic in training
and all-importantly sound. Whatever the social/ political disasters
of the Cold War period, on a musical level it is hard not to
feel that the corporate personality of all the Warsaw Pact countries’
orchestras remained clearly defined to the benefit of the music.
Whatever gains there might be in terms of orchestral personality
could be lessened by engineering and production of less than
demonstration quality. Apart from any issues of interpretative
merit what makes these two discs of particular interest is that
they benefit from the best possible combination of very fine
early digital recording supervised by Denon in performances
from the very end of the communist regime. Indeed, the second
disc seems to have been recorded only nine months before the
fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989. At the time of their
original release these were very much premium products with
the highest performance and production values; those qualities
shine through more than twenty years later.
Nobody purchasing these discs could be disappointed. The only
real area of debate is Blomstedt’s chosen interpretative style.
If I were trying to sum this up succinctly I would have to say
I find him objective rather than ardent, particularly on the
earlier disc of Also Sprach Zarathustra and Don Juan.
The comparison with the earlier analogue Dresden performances
from Rudolf Kempe are fascinating. Both use the famed Lukaskirche
in Dresden as the recording venue. The earlier recordings, although
good could never be thought of as in the best demonstration
category – even in the CD transfer the engineering gave the
playing just a fraction too much opaque resonance. In performance
terms, in a major set of many superb highlights I have to say
Kempe’s Also Sprach has always been my least favourite.
Blomstedt is better here although the cumulative impact of this
version does not thrill me as others do. I admire the superb
playing, the rich sonority of the orchestra but the last ounce
of exaltation is missing. Man resolutely not becoming
Superman here. Things don’t get off to a great start with the
agogic hesitation in the opening fanfare. This is one of my
touchstone moments in any performance. I understand why orchestras
delay the downbeat – the fractional hesitation allows the ensemble
to steady and prevents any individual instrument speaking early.
The trouble is that it is not what Strauss wrote – he clearly
wants a semi-quaver/16th note to propel the energy
forward. There is a simply superb live version form Karajan
and his Berlin players on HDTT that I made one of my Discs of
the Year last year. They fearlessly confront every musical hurdle
– the sense of hearing such an extraordinary group of players
performing on the very edge of failure is simply thrilling.
By contrast Blomstedt’s Dresdeners sound safe. Wonderfully safe,
magnificently secure, utterly untroubled yet fractionally bland.
A couple of little instances; in the ravishingly lyrical Das
Tanzlied section [track 8] the solo violin is a shade literal.
Compare Karajan’s concert master who finds a smilingly winsome
Viennese lilt. Denon’s recording is superb at filleting out
the complexities of the scoring yet retaining a believable natural
balance. At the opposite end of the drama scale is the marvellously
apocalyptic tolling of the midnight bell that opens the final
Nachtwanderlied. The score indicates a dynamic of fff.
In the theatre of my mind the bell is both the midnight
bell and some cataclysmic tocsin needing to be clangorous and
fearful. Here it is beautiful. The same virtues/deficiencies
– depending on your point of view - apply to pretty much all
of the performances on both discs. Don Juan is superbly
athletic and quite brilliantly played and again the recording
reveals a host of fantastic detail. The balancing and voicing
of the Dresden brass is exemplary and I love the way the lower
strings attack their parts – it gives the orchestra huge energy
from the bottom up. Great to hear the detail of the harp writing
too. But compared to Kempe – who is a full minute faster overall
than Blomstedt – this feels a little like a thirty-something
Don Juan not the carefree ardent young lover. I absolutely
understand why the slightly cool approach to the love music
will appeal to listeners who feel that the sentiment in Strauss
is all too often ‘milked’. However, from my point of view the
character of both Don Juan and Till Eulenspiegel
as people is one of extraordinary extremes and excess.
These are men who, as portrayed, do nothing by halves so to
my mind a musical representation has to teeter on the edge of
vulgarity. If a conductor allows an orchestra of the quality
of Dresden or Chicago or Cleveland that kind of hedonistic free-rein
the result can be overwhelming. The beautiful oboe melody at
6:40 is played to perfection and again Blomstedt prefers a gently
caressed manner which here allows a chaste simplicity which
is utterly beguiling but surely the impact of such simple beauty
would be greater if that which came before felt utterly unleashed.
The standout moment is the gloriously heroic horn fanfare –
both Kempe and Blomstedt are good here but Kempe’s greater thrust
and the mellower analogue recording tips the balance towards
him.
The three works on the second disc again receive fine performances
in very good sound. In context of the above it is no real surprise
that Blomstedt’s Metamorphosen is one of the slower on
record coming in at 28:58. If there were ever players able to
sustain the saturated string writing at any tempo it is these
Dresdeners. Again, although this version would grace any collection,
I could not say I think it is the best – whatever that means.
For some reason which I have not yet put my finger on, the final
revelation of the Eroica funeral theme does not have
the inevitability of the finest performances – this is a huge
span of music and I am not sure Blomstedt handles the structure
as assuredly as some. Death and Transfiguration receives
the best performance on the two discs. However, for purely convulsing
agonised wildness George Szell and his spectacularly virtuosic
Clevelanders are still the best. But this is a terrifyingly
driven performance in rather harsh early CBS/Sony stereo. Some
of the playing on that disc is the musical equivalent of ‘shock
and awe’. The Dresden players give little if anything to Cleveland
in pure technical terms and the extra warmth – musically and
technically – of the transfiguration passage is marvellous.
Although somewhat irrelevant to the current review I made a
comparison which I found interesting. The third Denon disc of
Strauss from this period was of Ein Heldenleben. This
work features in both Kempe’s box set and on a more recent Dresden
recording from Sony conducted by Fabio Luisi. I was curious
to see how the sound of the Dresden orchestra had changed from
1970s Kempe via 1980s Blomstedt to 2007’s Luisi. The answer
is remarkably little particularly after one has made allowances
for changes in recording perspective. All the virtues recognised
by Havergal Brian in the 1930s still hold good. This is an orchestra
which is built on the rock-solid foundation of the lower sonorities
in the ensemble. Any player will tell you chords are tuned from
the bottom up and it is the bass end of an orchestra which defines
the overall colour and tone of the whole.
This set represents an excellent bargain, although an investment
of little more than another £12.00 will gain so many additional
vintage performances in the Kempe set. For those who don’t like
vulgarity to creep into their Strauss this might well be an
ideal median point. For anyone interested in the myriad interpretational
possibilities the choices here are valid and played and recorded
beautifully if just the slightest bit staid. Not that it really
matters in the context of this reissue – the liner-note is rather
poor; timings given for both Don Juan and Metamorphosen
being way out and clearly unrelated to these performances. An
impression reinforced by the final line in the note which tells
us we are about to listen to Bruckner’s Symphony No.4!
I prefer my Zarathustras more Superman-esque and my Don Juans
and Tills Alpha-Males but these are versions to return to with
pleasure.
Nick Barnard
see also review by Brian
Reinhart (January 2010 Bargain of the Month)
Staatskapelle Dresden/Herbert Blomstedt 
