Strauss Don Juan Ein Heldenleben Bernard Haitink Conductor LONDON PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA Richard Strauss Don Juan, Op

STRAUSS DON JUAN EIN HELDENLEBEN BERNARD HAITINK conductor LONDON PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA RICHARD STRAUSS DON JUAN, OP. 20 | Ein Heldenleben (A Hero’S life), OP. 40 The world premiere of Don Juan, in Weimar on beginning to cause his parents some concern. 11 November 1889, was the kind of triumph of But Strauss had a more serious point in mind, which most young composers can only dream. as the work’s eerily desolate ending makes Suddenly critics and musicians were talking clear. The passionate driving energy suddenly about the 25-year-old Richard Strauss as the comes to a halt: bright major becomes most important German composer since shadowy minor, and in a few seconds the Wagner. Not that Strauss himself appears to life force seems to drain from the music. The have been greatly surprised. ‘It will make a key to this sudden, drastic change of mood is tremendous stir here’, he had reported to his found in the three extracts from the poem Don father once rehearsals began. It caused quite Juan by Nicolaus Lenau (1802–50), with which a stir amongst the musicians too, much to Strauss headed the score. The first extract tells Strauss’s amusement: of ‘the enchanted circle, the immeasurable horizon of countless charming, beautiful ‘The orchestra huffed and puffed but did women’, whom Don Juan conquers in a ‘storm its job famously. One of the horn players of pleasure’. The next extract, however, shows sat there out of breath, sweat pouring that Don Juan’s relentless pursuit masks an from his brow, asking “Good God, in what inner terror: ‘I fly from weariness and waning way have we sinned that you should have of joy.’ Finally comes the moment when the sent us this scourge?” We laughed till we ‘beautiful storm’ dies out: ‘And suddenly the cried!’ world to me is empty, deranged, nothing – the oil is burnt out, and the hearth is cold and Rehearsing the work with another orchestra dark.’ Self-delusion is over: Juan allows himself a few years later, Strauss found the words he to be killed by the son of the man he has needed to urge the musicians on: ‘I would ask murdered. those of you who are married to play as if you were still engaged and then all will be well.’ Granted, Strauss spends rather more time dwelling on the ‘beautiful storm’ than on the For all its musical sophistication, it is easy to great womaniser’s dismal end. The beginning sum up the message of Don Juan as a direct is a great upward surge of exultant feeling, expression of a young man’s ardour – a young from which emerges a splendid, forward man whose tempestuous love affairs were striding tune (high violins) against pulsating wind chords. At first the energy and cascading Despite this ‘dark saying’ at the end of Don invention seem limitless; but then comes a Juan, Strauss was by no means finished with sudden hush: tremolo strings and glockenspiel, the theme of testosterone-fuelled heroics. pianissimo with downward sliding woodwind ‘Beethoven’s “Eroica” [Heroic Symphony] – Juan is hooked again. Liquid harp figures and is so little beloved of our conductors’, he a sweetly languishing solo violin depict Don wrote eight years later, his tongue wedged Juan’s latest infatuation – his feelings, that is, firmly in his cheek, ‘that to fulfil a pressing rather than the girl herself. A suave love theme need I am composing a largish tone-poem (horn, soon followed by violins) describes the entitled Heldenleben [Hero’s Life], admittedly process of seduction. But soon the ‘upward without a funeral march, yet in E flat, with surge’ figure from the opening returns (cellos): lots of horns, which are always a yardstick of conquest is not enough; Don Juan’s dread- heroism.’ It was typical of the younger Strauss haunted desire must drive him ever onwards. to invite comparison with one of Beethoven’s most revered masterpieces. It seems that Eventually we arrive at the most exultant being hailed as the heir to Wagner was not theme of the work, sounded out gloriously enough. Did Strauss even dream of outdoing by the whole horn section. Strauss’s horn Beethoven? In one respect he did exactly that. writing is one of the most consistently thrilling Beethoven’s ‘Eroica’ was originally conceived features of his formidable orchestral technique as a tribute to another man, the French – a legacy of his father, Franz Strauss, principal revolutionary hero Napoleon Bonaparte. In horn of the Munich Court Orchestra, and Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben, however, the ‘hero’ of apparently a phenomenal player. There is a the title is none other than Strauss himself. full recapitulation, Don Juan surging onwards to more glorious conquests. But then comes Understandably, Strauss’s self-celebration the moment where it all falls apart – a bar incensed some critics at the work’s premiere of silence, then collapse. Strauss makes no in 1899. It still offends some today – we don’t attempt to elicit sympathy for Don Juan. expect a ‘classical’ composer to be like a rock Instead we have dissolving string tremolos star, indulging in orgiastic frenzies of self- and three final bare pizzicato minor chords: celebration. Such objections might be more in Lenau’s words, ‘the oil is burnt out, and the persuasive if Ein Heldenleben were a failure. hearth is cold and dark.’ In fact it is an intellectual and imaginative triumph: Strauss’s most daring and successful by the horns. Although the full eight are fusion of symphonic form and dramatic employed here, at the theme’s high point tone-poem. On one level Ein Heldenleben can Strauss entrusts the line to just one horn, be enjoyed as a strongly argued and finely supported by strings, and here the ‘strong proportioned one-movement symphony; on and glinting’ sound (as one critic put it) of another it tells a story in music as grippingly the LPO’s Principal Horn, the late Nicholas as Don Juan, or its successor, the still more Busch, stands proudly forward. For a while all ambitious Tod und Verklärung (Death and is supremely confident forward motion, as in Transfiguration). At the same time Strauss’s the first movement of Beethoven’s ‘Eroica’. handling of the huge orchestra (including eight But at the climax – just when one expects horns) is brilliant and ravishing. The conductor a clinching return of the main theme – this Thomas Beecham told how he and a friend great heroic hymn is suddenly cut off, to be ‘amused ourselves by discovering how many replaced by weirdly chattering woodwind notes we could take out of Heldenleben and figures plus a motif in lumpen fifths for tubas: leave the music essentially intact. By the time thus the ‘hero’ Strauss waspishly portrays we had finished we had taken out 15,000.’ the very critics who would attempt to belittle But a conductor like Bernard Haitink, with his Heldenleben. The once-heroic main theme exceptional ear for detail and inner voices in becomes troubled, harmonically clouded; but complex orchestral textures, can make one feel it is gradually soothed by a solo violin – this is that there isn’t a note too many – everything a portrait of Strauss’s wife, Pauline, scolding at tells. Strauss himself once said that one should first but increasingly tender. (Strauss once said conduct his most opulent scores – he cited the of her, ‘My wife’s a bit rough, but she’s what operas Salome and Elektra – ‘as if they had been I need.’) written by Mendelssohn: elfin music.’ He was being playful of course, but Haitink shows that Pacified at last, the hero now sets off to battle you can combine power, ripe sensuousness and (trumpet fanfares, side drum tattoos and other sweeping long lines with a Mendelssohn-like unmistakable military sounds). In time victory delicacy, and the music gains greatly. seems assured, but again the splendour is suddenly cut off: interestingly, this does seem As in Don Juan, Ein Heldenleben opens with a to be a recurring pattern in Strauss’s heroic heroic upward-thrusting theme, dominated music. After a long pause, the baleful tuba LONDON PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA ‘critics’ return (this time with hushed funereal One of the finest orchestras on the drums), hinting at remaining doubts. Is international stage, the London Philharmonic Strauss’s hero driven, like Don Juan, by a need Orchestra was founded in 1932 by Sir Thomas to escape some dark inner questioning? What Beecham. Since then, its Principal Conductors follows is a remarkable section subtitled ‘The have included Sir Adrian Boult, Bernard Hero’s Works of Peace’, in which Strauss quotes Haitink, Sir Georg Solti, Klaus Tennstedt and a succession of his own earlier works with Kurt Masur. In 2007 Vladimir Jurowski became growing warmth and assurance. Whatever the Orchestra’s 12th Principal Conductor. the critics may say, the achievement of artistic creation must be its own reward. Significantly The London Philharmonic Orchestra has been there are several references to the previous Resident Symphony Orchestra at Southbank tone-poem, Don Quixote, in which dreams of Centre’s Royal Festival Hall since 1992 and there heroism are eventually shown to be a pathetic it presents its main series of concerts between delusion. Near the end there is another September and May each year. In summer, the Orchestra takes up its annual residency at moment of doubt – the darkest of them Glyndebourne Festival Opera, where it has been all – with swirling strings and woodwind, Resident Symphony Orchestra for over 50 years. rasping muted brass and the critics’ theme on The Orchestra also has residencies in Brighton trumpets; but again the solo violin (Pauline) and Eastbourne, and performs regularly around brings peace and reassurance, signified by a the UK.

Load more