Richard Strauss Franz Liszt Erich Korngold Ferruccio Busoni Franz Schreker ORCHESTRE DE LA SUISSE ROMANDE KAZUKI YAMADA Richard Strauss (1864 – 1949) Richard Strauss (1864 – 1949) 1. Salome’s Dance from Salome, Op. 54 9.46 9. Erste Walzerfolge 12.11 (Dance of the seven veils) (Tanz der sieben Schleier) (First sequence of waltzes) from Der Rosenkavalier, Op. 59 (1946) Franz Liszt (1811 – 1886) 2. Mephisto Waltz No. 1 11.30 (from Two Episodes from Lenau’s Faust, S110/2) Total playing time: 65.34 Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897 – 1957) 3. Straussiana (1953) 7.22 Orchestre de la Suisse Romande Polka – Mazurka – Waltz conducted by Kazuki Yamada Ferruccio Busoni (1866 – 1924) 4. Tanz-Walzer, Op. 53 12.07 (In memory of Johann Strauss) (Dem Andenken Johann Strauss) Franz Schreker (1878 – 1934) Ein Tanzspiel (1908, orchestrated 1920) 5. Sarabande (Lento, con expressione) 3.31 6. Menuett (Allegro scherzando) 3.10 7. Madrigal (Andante) 3.24 This album was recorded at the Victoria Hall in Geneva, 8. Gavotte (Allegro festivo) 2.27 Switzerland in July 2013. Dear Listeners, Thank you for choosing our CD. waltz, the harmonies are very heard and I love the devilish atmo- fits perfectly with this music – it’s I would love to share with you a few uncharacteristic and full of surprises. sphere – though it remains at the incredible to conduct! of my personal thoughts about these Busoni wrote some very challenging same time a very beautiful score. glorious works. works for orchestra – but also very When listening to this music, I am We hope that you enjoy listening to it It is always surprising to me that stimulating. It’s a pity this music is reminded of a proverb: “There is no as much as we enjoyed recording it! Korngold’s music isn’t better known not performed more often. rose without a thorn”. internationally. His output was truly All my best wishes, extraordinary and I find it consis- It was the first time for me conduct- Lastly; we couldn’t produce this disc Kazuki Yamada tently capturing my imagination ing Schreker’s ‘Ein Tanzspiel’ – and without including some works by the with its beautiful imagery. On this I was surprised at this wonderful wonderful Richard Strauss; Salome’s disc, ‘Straussiana’ has such a charm music! Each movement has such a Dance and the Rosenkavalier Suite. about it and the orchestra performed clearly defined character – Strauss is one of the composers which the score with real joy. The Strauss I particularly love the third the OSR is used to performing as the referred to by Korngold was of course movement. opera orchestra in the theatre in less ‘Richard’ and more ‘Johann’ (the A work that is far better known is Geneva. Their style is so well suited to Waltz King), and it’s worth noting Liszt’s ‘Mephisto’ Waltz No 1. this music and I love how they express here that although the work we’ve The appearance of the Mephisto the story and atmosphere through chosen by Busoni for this disc is also a character in this work can be clearly the notes. Their shimmering sound Three-quarter time The Viennese composer-conductor, a new arrangement of the operetta adjusted to suit American tastes, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, was one in 1942 for the New Opera Company exhibits unmistakable features of the and the end of an of Strauss’ greatest admirers among of New York, which staged the work Hollywood style – a style to whose the following generation. In 1923, under the title, Rosalinda. Shortly development Korngold himself had era Hubert Marischka, director of the before his death, Korngold arranged indeed substantially contributed. Theater an der Wien, asked Korngold Die Fledermaus yet again, for an NBC “Unfortunately not composed to conduct Strauss’ operetta, Eine television production. Another ‘hommage to Strauss’ is by me,” wrote Johannes Brahms Nacht in Venedig. And like any Ferruccio Busoni’s Tanzwalzer, Op. under the theme of the waltz, An self-respecting Kapellmeister of The waltz, too, continued to fascinate 53. Based in Berlin at the time of der schönen, blauen Donau on the his day, Korngold wrote his own Korngold. His last orchestral work, the work’s composition, this Italian ‘autograph fan’ of Johann Strauss arrangement of the score, adjusting Straussiana (1953), a hommage to composer, who is not normally Jr.’s stepdaughter, Alice. But Brahms it to the possibilities of the theatre the Waltz King, was the result of associated with the Viennese waltz, was not the only composer who and orchestra available to him. It was a commission from an American wrote down his initial ideas for the greatly admired the music of the the first of a series of arrangements publisher specialised in music for piece (on 19 September 1920) in a Waltz King. Indeed, it served as an destined to unleash a true ‘Strauss school orchestras. Although the jesting frame of mind. The following inspiration to many a composer of Renaissance.’ And once Korngold, work had to be playable by young day, he began working on the the period. With its light, elegant and following the Anschluss of 1938, had musicians, it is nevertheless a brilliant orchestration, which he completed sparkling surface, and melancholy, fled to the United States with his score in three parts, dedicated on 1 October. On 13 January of the at times even daemonic undertone, family, in his adopted country as well, respectively to the polka, mazurka following year, Busoni conducted it was a genre that embodied, as no he proved to be a tireless champion and waltz. Here, Korngold primarily his waltz at a concert of the Berlin other, the split and double-faced of the operetta genre. Having already employed little-known melodies by Philharmonic. In the programme, character of the fin de siècle. created a new version of Strauss’ Die Strauss, including ones from the he explained: “The idea for the Fledermaus in 1929, at the request operetta, Ritter Pásmán. The work, Tanzwalzer originally came to of director Max Reinhardt he wrote whose orchestration he entirely the composer as a sort of joke (and English as a self-test of his ability to write in the 19th-century world following the a lighter vain), while walking down close of the First World War. Ravel the street. It was directly inspired himself regarded the work as the by the sounds of a waltz emerging apotheosis of the Viennese waltz: from within a café. [...] The work is a dizzying maelstrom of destiny. dedicated to the memory of Johann Schorske calls it a danse macabre, Strauss, of whom the composer is which degenerates into a neurotic, a true admirer.” Despite its light- compulsive and obsessive vortex, hearted origin, Tanzwalzer, which until the music, as it were, explodes consists of a sombre, introspective and breaks up into separate, distinct introduction followed by four waltzes, sounds. Busoni would later re-use portions of the score for the scene depicting a The waltz as a danse macabre is not banquet at the court of Parma in his just something we encounter in La opera, Doktor Faust. valse – or, for that matter, in the Danse Macabre of Camille Saint- In his standard work, ‘Fin-de-siècle Saëns. Franz Liszt, for example, Vienna: Politics and Culture,’ cultural penned a total of four Mephisto historian Carl Schorske describes Waltzes, whose leading roles are how, in Maurice Ravel’s hands, the assigned to the devil and death. waltz became a musical parable of The first, whose original piano Europe’s cultural crisis. According version probably dates from 1857, to Schorske, Ravel, in his La valse was subsequently orchestrated by (1919–1920), recorded the death of Liszt in 1861 as part of a diptych, Photography by Marco Borggreve entitled Episoden aus Lenaus Faust. violin and entrances everyone with is blauen Donau and the Sachertorte the melody accompanying the words, Poet Nikolaus Lenau (1802–1850) playing. The dance degenerates into makes place for the universe of “Ich bin verliebt in deinen Leib, had written an entirely different a wild orgy. Faust dances with one Richard Strauss and such works as Jochanaan!” (“I am in love with your version of the Faust legend than his of the girls and disappears into the Also sprach Zarathustra and Salome: body, Jochanaan!”). colleague, Goethe. In its first episode, darkness with her. A nightingale sings the domain of the unconscious and But as impressive as the Schleiertanz Der nächtliche Zug, Faust watches a lovesong. the neurosis. may be, nowhere in his oeuvre does a sombre funeral procession pass Strauss deploy the Viennese waltz to by one stormy night. Liszt employs Liszt composed two alternative Richard Strauss composed the ‘Dance greater effect than in his opera, Der the plainchant melody, Pange lingua concluding passages for the of the seven Veils’ within a period Rosenkavalier, although, to be sure, from the liturgy for Corpus Christi orchestral version of the Mephisto of two weeks in August 1905, after its use has something anachronistic and Maundy Thursday to denote Waltz. The swirling end from the the rest of the score of the opera, about it, as the story of the opera is the music’s underlying meaning version for solo piano was selected for Salome, was already complete. The set in the Vienna of Empress Maria for 19th-century listeners, who the present recording. dance marks the opera’s emotional Theresia. In that regard, music like were generally familiar with such turning point; in it, Salome sheds that composed by Franz Schreker plainchant tunes. In the second part If Carl Schorske saw in Ravel’s La her girlish persona and reveals for the ballet, Ein Tanzspiel (‘A of the diptych, the Mephisto Waltz, valse a metaphor for a collapsing herself to be a bloodthirsty femme Dance Play’), would have been more Liszt uses the waltz as a musical world, the same certainly applies to fatale, driven by a morbid eroticism.