Description: Gerard Schwarz Conducts & Discusses Richard Strauss (Musically Speaking) CD NEWI have very much appreciated Gerard Schwarz's conducting for a long time. Every time we have gone to Seattle for something I have managed to hear him conduct live. But somehow I didn't hear his Thus Spake Zarathustra till recently when I bought a whole big lot of these Musically Speaking CDs. The Zarathustra is really special for the great feeling of coherence and connectedness that Schwarz give this very difficult tone poem. It is a work, so strangely, that almost never gets good performances. It is a work that seems to tempt the most laid-back or meticulous conductors to great over exaggeration. It is so hyperbolic in most readings, that after each climax there is no place to "go". It sounds disjointed and very coarsely bombastic. And of course being once used in a movie only made this fate worse for this great piece of music.But in general I don't think it was the movie that did the work in. It was the fact that it is based on the work of a famous madman, Nietzsche. Somehow conductors feel that they have to react philosophically in some way, to say that they "get" it. Or they react against the Nietzschean inspiration, and still end up giving some sort of extra-musical commentary. I have no other explanation of why a work of rather straight-forward dramatic points, and dynamic contrasts, is played in a wacky way usually. It is as if they thought they were reading not fortissimo and piano in the score, but "Die Faehne Hoch!" and thus thought they had to over-compensate in some way.Well, Schwarz's reading is the exact opposite. What a delight! It is played musically and not philosophically. This means in fact that its connections with anything "Nietzschean" seem rather remote. If it "sounds" like any thinker here , it is Goethe! Perhaps Schwarz was even consciously making some points in all these regards, one is tempted to think given how different this sounds. This is especially noticeable in the dance of life motif, where Karajan read it (I must say enjoyably for once) as a heaving Dionysiac orgy dance. By contrast, Schwarz give it the most sly otherness. It sounds suddenly, delightfully, and improbably like a slick "Salon Orchestra" of Strauss' own day. Indeed, one cannot help thinking of the salon orchestra arrangement of Der Rosenkavalier that the composer did for a movie. Could the conductor possibly have had this in mind?? The dance theme is thus given a kind of wry decadence that almost sounds like a curious reflection on the banality of culture that produced the mad over-reaction of a Nietzsche. Whatever the case, the reading works from start to finish, and each part relates, as it should. It is wunderbar!
Price: 2.99 USD
Location: Richlands, North Carolina
End Time: 2024-09-26T23:55:59.000Z
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Restocking Fee: No
Return shipping will be paid by: Buyer
All returns accepted: Returns Accepted
Item must be returned within: 30 Days
Refund will be given as: Money Back
Artist: Seattle Symphony Orchestra
CD Grading: Mint (M)
Format: CD
Release Year: 1996
Record Label: CVP
Release Title: Musically Speaking The Great Works Collection Strauss
Case Type: Jewel Case: Standard
Case Condition: Mint (M)
Genre: Classical
Inlay Condition: Mint (M)
