Yesterday afternoon the Met Opera Orchestra performed an all-Strauss program in the second of its series of concerts at Carnegie Hall. James Levine was most unfortunately not able to conduct this performance as originally planned; his place at the podium was taken by David Robertson, music director of the St. Louis Symphony. Thankfully, soprano Renée Fleming, whose forte I've always considered to be her interpretations of Strauss's lieder, was still available as soloist.
The program opened with the early tone poem Don Juan, Op. 20 (1888). Coincidentally, I had just heard last month a performance at Juilliard of this same work and was interested in comparing it to the present rendition by the Met Orchestra. This, of course, was the work with which the young Strauss first established his reputation. And deservedly so, though the piece is not nearly as innovative as it first appears. While Strauss is often credited with having originated the tone poem as a genre, the term had in fact been used earlier by Liszt in describing several of his own works. If one chooses to look even further back, the concept of affixing a program to a symphonic work had been introduced decades earlier by Beethoven in his Sixth Symphony, the Pastoral. Nevertheless, the work is a remarkable achievement for so young a composer and of historical importance for the impetus it gave to his career. In it, Strauss successfully adapted the influence of Wagner to create a style that was uniquely his own and that he was to successfully develop over the coming years. Moreover, the work has a charm that is missing from Strauss's later and more bombastic tone poems.
Next came the real heart of the program, Vier letzte Lieder ("Four Last Songs"), composed several months before the composer's death at age 84 and premiered posthumously. These were his last major compositions and, as such, must be considered his final testament. It is really the late Strauss that I've always found most fascinating. What must it have been like for him during the war years to have witnessed his country, once the proud cultural center of Europe, bombed into rubble? He never spoke publicly about his feelings, but shortly after composing his masterpiece Metamorphosen he confided to his diary:
"The most terrible period of human history is at an end, the twelve year reign of bestiality, ignorance and anti-culture under the greatest criminals, during which Germany's 2000 years of cultural evolution met its doom."
The composer who wrote the Four Last Songs was not the same individual who had completed Don Juan sixty years before. He had seen and suffered too much in the interval. There is no trace of self-pity but only a pervading sense of resignation when at the end of the last song Im Abendrot, whose text was written by the nineteenth century Romantic poet Joseph von Eichendorff, he asks "Ist dies etwa der Tod?"
After intermission, Ms. Fleming returned to the stage to perform a selection of Strauss's lieder - Meinem Kinde, Liebeshymnus, Das Bächlein, Ruhe, meine Seele, and Die heiligen drei Könige aus Morgenland. The choice of Das Bächlein was surprising as this was the infamous piece that Strauss, after having been newly appointed president of the Reichsmusikkammer, had not only dedicated to Goebbels but had then gone on to close with the odious sentiment, "Der mich gerufen aus dem Stein,/Der, denk ich, wird mein Führer sein."
The program concluded with the orchestra's performance of Also sprach Zarathustra, Op. 30 (1896). Eight years separate this work from Don Juan, and in the interim its composer had gone on to become the most highly lauded musical figure of his time, the very personification of the German fin de siècle ethos. Not surprisingly then, what first strikes one when listening to the work's dramatic, over-the-top opening is Strauss's hubris that was to become even more evident in his self-referential Ein Heldenleben written two years later. In taking his inspiration from Nietzsche's concept of the "superman," Strauss could not have but helped but see in himself its very incarnation. Little could he have suspected then how discredited the term would become in the twentieth century after the Nazis had betrayed its meaning to further their own nightmarish purposes. It could also never have occurred to Strauss that the genre that had so elevated his reputation was essentially a musical dead end, one which he himself would abandon as his country descended into the cataclysm of World War I. Ironically, what later saved this work from becoming an anachronism was its use in popular culture, i.e., the soundtrack of Kubrick's classic film 2001: A Space Odyssey. It gave the work a new popularity that ensured its continued place in the repertoire even as its original meaning faded from the memory of its listeners.
This was a strong performance. David Robertson's conducting, if not inspired, was workmanlike and satisfactory. Renée Fleming was excellent as she sang the repertoire with which she has always been most comfortable. It was a feast for the audience to hear so many great Strauss lieder performed so brilliantly. As for the musicians, I consider the Met Orchestra right now to be the best in the world, on a par or even ahead of the great European ensembles. It will be interesting in the coming seasons to see how well the company fares under a new music director.
No comments:
Post a Comment