This disc is a follow-up to the same team’s superb performance
of Strauss’s
Eine
Alpensinfonie. I considered that disc to be possibly
the single finest achievement in Naxos’s considerable crown
- a performance both epic and humane aided by a superb recording
and a magnificent orchestra steeped in Straussian tradition.
So it was with considerable expectation that I listened to this
performance of the
Symphonia domestica. Strauss’s
two big programme symphonies are the pieces most often dragged
out by his detractors as the ultimate examples of his over-weaning
ego and penchant for excess. Certainly they are scored for huge
orchestras and last over three quarters of an hour. The thing
that jars for many people - particularly in the case of
Symphonia
Domestica - is the public flaunting of private, even intimate,
details - some considering the passionate love music of the adagio
voyeuristic and tasteless. I have always felt this is to miss
the point - Strauss was a virtuoso of the orchestra in the way
others are of the violin. Clearly he delighted in being able
to bend it and the rules of form and composition to fit whatever
musical plan he had in mind. I feel we as listeners should focus
more on the
Symphonia element and less on the
Domestica.
After all, we are quite happy to listen to the extended unconsummated
passion of
Tristan and Isolde which we accept because
it is a story but reject the Strauss because it is considered
reportage. This is all a red herring we have been thrown. If
we knew nothing of the “programme” behind this piece
we would be little worse off. This piece works
symphonically better
than many other works so labelled. It is down to Strauss’s
brilliance that he creates a series of inter-related themes thereby
showing a family relationship. These is then able to treat both
dramatically and musically in a coherent manner which is logical
to both creative strands. As I say, a virtuoso showing off! I
absolutely adore this piece. For its unbridled passion and vigour
and thrilling orchestration it has few equals; not all great
music has to be profound.
So to the current performance, Many of the virtues that graced
the earlier disc remain. The Weimar Staatskapelle is a magnificent
orchestra. They have a rich burnished tone building on a resonant
dark-hued bottom end that is ideal for this style of music. All
solos are taken with great style and musicality. To my ear they
combine the best of the warmth of the Berlin Philharmonic with
the tonal personality of the Dresden Staatskapelle; this is an
orchestra I would love to hear perform live. Wit’s approach
to the work is essentially similar to that of the
Alpine Symphony.
He eschews passing drama in favour of a longer more epic stance.
This paid dividends in the earlier recording - there was a cumulative
power to his interpretation that felt absolutely right. Part
of the explanation for that could be that that piece, in following
one day in the mountains, could be seen as a metaphor for the
traversal of life from birth to death.
Symphonia domestica is
about
a single day and the hustle and bustle that is part of it. Hence
there does need to be an urgency about much of the writing. Timings
alone are never a good way to judge a performance but Wit, at
nearly forty-seven minutes in length, is by some measure the
slowest performance I have compared. Szell blazes his way through
in just over forty-one - technically stunning - but a rather
regimented household one can’t help but feel! Even that
most affectionate of Straussians, Kempe, is a good couple of
minutes faster.
Everything starts well with the character of
the orchestra both corporately and individually immediately apparent.
I see that this performance was recorded about two years after
the earlier one - the
Metamorphosen actually dates from
the same group of sessions as the
Alpine Symphony - with
a different engineer. He has not quite caught the inner detail
with such a miraculous combination of detail and beauty as his
colleague. It is from the central portion of the symphony that
the performance as a whole begins to lose its way. Somehow the
music seems to become becalmed. This is in part due to the loss
of some of the inner detail. The contrapuntal writing in this
work is remarkable even by Strauss’s standards so that
even when the tempo slows there is an inner energy driving the
music forward. This piece was for me one of Järvi’s
greater successes in his Chandos cycle. This was due in no small
part to the engineers managing to delineate the numerous lines
in the musical texture. The extended love-scene lies at the heart
of the work and to succeed it does need to overwhelm the listener
with a series of climaxes that sweep away reserve and reservations.
Sadly, in this, Wit does not succeed - it is beautiful where
I want passion and considered where I want wildness. The symphony’s
final section with its curious double fugue - the use of such
an intellectually rigorous form after the abandon of what has
gone before has always mystified me - is in many ways the piece’s
weakest element and works best when played with unbuttoned good
humour. It features some of the most remarkable horn writing
that even Strauss produced which whilst it does register here
does not overwhelm as I wish it would; once again Järvi
and his SNO horns have a field day here. So I would have to say
a worthy performance and an ongoing delight to hear this orchestra
but not the automatic first choice I had rather hoped it would
be.
Metamorphosen is a very substantial filler. The key to
the approach here - and I’m sure that Wit is absolutely
correct - is that this is a piece for 23
solo strings.
Hence it is in effect a piece of large-scale chamber music. Other
performances such as those by Karajan and his Berlin players
produce a wall of tone that is remarkable - to the point you
wonder how 23 players can produce that much sound - but in doing
so the personal nature, the individual character of the loss
that is being mourned vanishes. There is a lean quality to the
Weimar sound that allows each line to be clearly followed and
this reinforces the genius of the contrapuntal writing. It is
a sombre performance as befits a piece written as a musical oration
for a lost city and culture. Wit again directs a performance
that sits at the slower end of a range of timings. Interestingly
no performance I have heard clocks in at the 30 minutes indicated
in the score. Of those I possess Zinman is slowest at 28:57 with
Wit second at 28:16. The broad lamenting approach pays dividends
here. Also the recording is splendid, beautifully balanced across
the sonic range but with a richness to the bass lines that lets
this extraordinary music sit on an harmonic bedrock above which
the multitudinous polyphonic lines swoop and intertwine. The
hardest element of this work is sustaining the single arc from
gentle opening through contorted climax to desolate resolution.
Wit’s pacing is excellent; never once do you feel he has
allowed the music to peak too soon or conversely to sag. Listen
at the very end when finally the
Eroica motif in the basses
appears unadorned how the accompanying upper strings blanch away
their tone and vibrato to produce a final descent into oblivion.
Quite superb. There is a sustained intensity to the music-making
here that belies it being “just another session”.
Clearly the creative fires were burning brightly in Weimar in
July 2005!
Metamorphosen has been fortunate in receiving
many fine performances so I think it quite impossible to single
out one as being first amongst equals. However, to my ear this
new version is worthy of being considered up there with the very
best. Listening several times to both performances on this disc
I have no doubt that the earlier engineering of the string work
is finer than that accorded the symphony although the latter
is by no means poor.
Worth mentioning at this point Keith Anderson’s typically
fine liner-note which explains with concision and clarity the
genesis of both works. He points out, among many interesting
facts, that
Metamorphosen was composed in less than one
month first note to last (13
th March - 12
th April
1945) - an astonishing burst of creativity for any composer producing
a work of such complexity let alone one some 77 years old.
All in all another powerful disc of Strauss from Wit and his
Weimar orchestra. For a
Domestica of sheer delight I would
turn elsewhere but an excellent
Metamorphosen is more
than compensation and at the price a Naxos disc well worth the
purchasing.
Nick Barnard
Masterwork Index: All reviews of Symphonia Domestica
Staatskapelle Weimar/Antoni
Wit 
