R. Strauss: Ein Heldenleben & Burleske

Authoritative from the first bar’s fleshy bass, Antonio Pappano’s bel canto approach to Strauss’s mock-epic hero cultivates beauty of sound even in usually bombastically noisy stretches such... — BBC Music Magazine, August 2021, 5 out of 5 stars (Performance) / 4 out of 5 stars (Recording) More…

Release Date: 14th May 2021
Catalogue No: 9029502845
Label: Warner Classics
Length: 66 minutes

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Strauss, R: Ein Heldenleben, Op. 40

Work length47:12

Album only

Roberto Gonzales-Monjas (violin)
Orchestra dell’Academia nazionale di Santa Cecilia
Antonio Pappano

I. Der Held

Track length4:21

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II. Des Helden Widersacher

Track length3:26

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III. Des Helden Gefahrtin

Track length14:03

Album only

IV. Des Helden Walstatt

Track length9:06

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V. Des Helden Friedenswerke

Track length5:15

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VI. Des Helden Weltflucht und Vollendung

Track length11:01

Album only

Strauss, R: Burleske for Piano and orchestra in D minor, AV85

Work length19:45

Album only

Bertrand Chamayou (piano)
Orchestra dell’Academia nazionale di Santa Cecilia
Antonio Pappano

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Interview, Antonio Pappano on Vaughan Williams and Strauss

16th June 2021

The conductor discusses his recent recordings of Vaughan Williams symphonies and Strauss orchestral works, his recent appointment at the LSO, and the ongoing impact of lockdowns on musical life.

Antonio Pappano conducts Rome’s Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in two works from the earlier phase of Richard Strauss’s career: a comparative rarity, the mercurial, virtuosic Burleske for piano and orchestra, with Bertrand Chamayou as soloist, and the epic autobiographical tone poem Ein Heldenleben, one of the composer’s orchestral masterpieces.

“Strauss always thought dramaturgically,” says Pappano. “Recording this music in Italy, the link has to be through opera, with all its theatricality, temperament, contrast and colour… You need a certain charisma in the sound, which these players achieve.”

Reviews

August 2021

Authoritative from the first bar’s fleshy bass, Antonio Pappano’s bel canto approach to Strauss’s mock-epic hero cultivates beauty of sound even in usually bombastically noisy stretches such as the central battle. There is gravitas in the breadth of this performance, yet it also has operatic exuberance in spades.

June 2021

His Santa Cecilia Orchestra has become a force to be reckoned with under his directorship, and the playing throughout is wonderful in its focus and clarity.

May 2021

The composer-hero emerges as unusually grounded (though crucially never earth-bound) from the very first phrases of this loveable, refreshingly unbombastic Heldenleben, thanks to Pappano’s spacious tempi and the broad, generous sweep of the Santa Cecilia strings; there’s a thrilling edge to the brass in the battle-scene, and leader Roberto Gonzales-Monjas is ideally capricious and beguiling in his depiction of Strauss’s wife Pauline. And Chamayou’s deft, exuberant pianism in the early Burleske is a joy.

29th May 2021

Pappano revels in the spiteful woodwind chattering of the Hero’s Adversaries (critics), the mostly flattering rapture of his Companion (Strauss’s wife, Pauline, here brilliantly characterised by the solo violinist, Roberto González-Monjas) and the bravado of the battle scene. In the Burleske Chamayou makes light of the difficulties its dedicatee, the pianist Hans von Bülow, declined to play.

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Interview, Antonio Pappano on Vaughan Williams and Strauss