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570283bk Strauss US 14/12/07 8:59 am Page 5 Staatskapelle Weimar Michael Halász Richard The successor to a court orchestra founded in 1491, the Staatskapelle Weimar has a long and distinguished history. Michael Halász’s first engagement as a conductor was at the Munich Gartnerplatztheater where, between 1972 and This was the orchestra in which Bach was employed from 1708 to 1717 and which, after being disbanded in 1735, 1975, he directed all operetta productions. In 1975 he moved to Frankfurt to work as principal Kapellmeister with STRAUSS was revived by Duchess Anna Amalia in 1756, in part as a theatre orchestra. The ensemble flourished during the Christoph von Dohnányi and here he conducted the most important works of the operatic repertoire. Many Weimar period of Wieland and Goethe, and then enjoyed particular renown under the direction of Franz Liszt, who engagements as a guest conductor followed and in 1977 Dohnányi took him to the Staatsoper in Hamburg as lived in Weimar from 1848 to 1861, introducing contemporary and sometimes controversial repertoire, and bringing principal Kapellmeister. From 1978 to 1991 he was General Musical Director of the Hagen Opera House and in Wagner’s opera Tannhäuser to Weimar, where he also directed the première of Lohengrin. In 1889 another 1991 he took up the post of Resident Conductor at the Vienna State Opera. For Naxos Michael Halász has recorded Four Last Songs extraordinary conductor and composer helped the orchestra achieve an even higher degree of quality and greater works by Tchaikovsky (ballets), Wagner (operatic excerpts), symphonies by Beethoven, Schubert and Mahler, Brentano-Lieder reputation, the 25-year-old Richard Strauss, who worked in Weimar for five years as the second conductor. Strauss Rossini’s overtures and two volumes of Liszt’s symphonic poems, the latter described by the Penguin Guide as “one directed the world première of his own first opera Guntram and Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel in Weimar, major of the most successful collections of Liszt’s symphonic poems to have emerged in recent years”. Beyond the cultural events which also included his legendary, uncut performances of Wagner’s operas. In addition, Weimar was standard and purely orchestral repertoire he has recorded Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater and Orfeo, Fauré’s Requiem, Ricarda Merbeth, Soprano the first to give performances of Strauss’s newest orchestral works, such as Don Juan, Macbeth, and Death and Mozart’s Mass in C minor and his Kyrie in D minor, Richard Strauss’s Bourgeois Gentilhomme, Beethoven’s Transfiguration. In 1919 the orchestra took the name Staatskapelle Weimar, and National Socialism from 1933 and Creatures of Prometheus, cello concertos by Dvofiák, Elgar, Dohnányi and Lalo, and Rubinstein’s violin concerto. Weimar Staatskapelle • Michael Halász the destructions of war brought their own difficulties. After the war the Staatskapelle was re-formed by Hermann For Marco Polo Michael Halász has recorded Rubinstein’s ballet music and Don Quixote, Goldmark’s Symphony Abendroth, followed at his death by Gerhard Pflüger in 1956 and Lothar Seyfarth in 1973, then Rolf Reuter No. 2, Miaskovsky’s Symphonies 7 and 10, Schmidt’s Symphony No. 1 and a pioneering recording of Schreker’s (1979/80) and Peter Gülke (1981/82). In 1984, Oleg Caetani was engaged as a permanent guest conductor, and in opera Der ferne Klang (now available on Naxos 8.660074-75). Building on his growing prowess in the opera house, 1988, Hans Frank returned as Principal Conductor. After 1990 the orchestra was reinforced in number to almost a Halász has directed recordings of Fidelio (8.660070-71), Don Giovanni (8.660080-82) and Die Zauberflöte hundred musicians. Since then, the Staatskapelle Weimar has consciously cultivated its great tradition while (8.660030-31), the last of these winning particular critical praise. His most recent opera recording was of Le nozze constantly expanding its repertoire. In 2002 George Alexander Albrecht completed his seven-year term as General di Figaro (8.660102-04). Music Director, to be succeeded by Jac van Steen. In summer 2005, the American conductor Carl St. Clair was appointed General Music Director, the first non-European to hold the top position in Thuringia’s premier orchestra. 8.570283 5 6 8.570283 570283bk Strauss US 14/12/07 8:59 am Page 2 Richard Strauss (1864–1949) new figure, a rhythmic motif that recurs, to find a place in Czech god of light, and throughout the song. Ich wollt’ ein Monsieur Jourdain displays his wealth and comic lack of interrupted by the intervention of Zerbinetta and her Four Last Songs • Brentano-Lieder the horn of the postlude. Sträusslein binden (I wanted to make a little garland) is taste. The original version included a German version of commedia dell’arte companions, who provide an ironic Beim Schlafengehen (At going to sleep) was less challenging in its modulations, opening with an Molière, followed by the entertainment Monsieur contrast. Both elements of the opera are represented in The German composer and conductor Richard Strauss 1949. completed in July 1948. The poem, written at a time of important motif. The lover responds to the flower’s plea Jourdain had commanded. In the second version the first the orchestral extracts. The overture befits the seeming was born in Munich, the son of a distinguished horn- Strauss had written songs throughout his life and difficulty in Hesse’s life, suggests the sleep of death and not to be picked, and he is abandoned by his beloved; act is replaced by a Prologue, after which the opera is tragedy, while the dance scene represents the attempts of player and his second wife, a member of a rich brewing during the spring and summer of 1948, still in freedom in the magic circle of the night, an idea there are troubles in love, and things can be no different. staged, an opera seria interspersed with characters from the comedians to divert Ariadne, and Zerbinetta’s family. He had a sound general education there, while Switzerland, he wrote what came to be described as the prefigured in the violin solo that precedes the final verse The third song, Säusle, liebe Myrte! (Rustle, dear the commedia dell’arte. The tragic heroine Ariadne, a expected romance with Harlequin. studying music under teachers of obvious distinction. Four Last Songs, although he actually wrote one more as of the poem. myrtle!), in which the girl sings to her sleeping lover, Cretan princess, is abandoned by her lover Theseus on Before he left school in 1882 he had already enjoyed a private gift to the Czech singer Maria Jeritza, who had Im Abendrot (In Twilight), written in May, but rightly depicts the poetic imagery of the verse, the sound of the the island of Naxos, where she finally meets Bacchus, to some success as a composer, continued during his brief created the rôles of Ariadne and of the Empress in Die placed last, is a setting of Joseph von Eichendorff, the turtle-dove, the passing clouds in the sky, and the chirping be united with him. The introspection of the heroine is Keith Anderson period at Munich University with the composition of Frau ohne Schatten. It was during his time in Switzerland only solo song of Strauss to use one of his poems, of the cricket, and there is extended figuration marking concertos for violin and for French horn and a sonata for that Strauss had come across the poems of the Nobel Prize although Eichendorff, with his outstanding lyrical the words schlaf, träume, flieg (sleep, dream, fly) in the cello and piano. By the age of 21 he had been appointed winner Hermann Hesse, black-listed in Germany in 1943, qualities, had appealed strongly both to Schumann and to last verse. In Als mir dein Lied erklang (When I heard Ricarda Merbeth assistant conductor to the well-known orchestra at a reflection of the earlier hostility there in 1914 to his Wolf, among others. The words of the poem Strauss your song), a song of passionate variety, the motif heard Meiningen under Hans von Bülow, whom he succeeded pacifist views and beliefs in human spirituality, chose are a clear reflection of his mood, as he and his wife first when the voice enters with the words Dein Lied After her successful graduation from the Leipzig Musikhochschule Ricarda Merbeth’s first engagement was as a in the following year. Weltglaube. Strauss completed three settings of Hesse’s neared the end of their lives, Wir sind durch Not und erklang returns with the recurrence of the same words, lyric soprano at the Städtischen Bühnen in Magdeburg. There she sang the parts of Mimì, the Countess, Tatyana, In 1886 Strauss resigned from Meiningen and began poems. The first of these, Frühling (Spring), a relatively Freude / gegangen Hand in Hand (We have gone through reaching a final prolonged climax in conclusion. Amor!, Fiordiligi, Antonia, Agathe and Eva. During the 1997–1999 season she sang at the Deutsches Nationaltheater in the series of tone-poems that seemed to extend to the early poem by Hesse, is a romantic evocation of the trouble and joy / hand in hand). The song unfolds with with an added bar of introduction and a brief anticipation Weimar. From 1999 to 2005 Ricarda Merbeth was a member of the Vienna State Opera, where she was able to utmost limit the extra-musical content of the form. season, In dämmrigen Grüften / träumte ich lang / von that poignancy of which Strauss was a master, posing the of the vocal line by the oboe, calls for coloratura singing extend her repertoire. In 2004 she sang the leading rôle in a new production of Richard Strauss’s Daphne, conducted Meanwhile he was establishing his reputation as a deinen Bäumen und blauen Lüften, / von deinem Duft und final question, ist dies etwa der Tod? (Is this perhaps in the melismatic prolongation of the first syllable of by Semyon Bychkov and directed by Nicolas Joel.