A Yuja Wang Dress Report, Prokofiev 2, and the Munich Philharmonic in Brahms

Back in May of this year: A nice day, an empty concert hall. And many—more than half of Munich’s Philharmonic Hall 2500 capacity, I’d guess—seat cushions staring at Yuja Wang devilling through the Prokofiev Second Piano Concerto—accompanied by the relative no-name conductor Michał Nesterowicz who replaced, to the best of his considerable ability—the late Lorin Maazel.

Mademoiselle Wang played the work a touch cool and subdued, despite near-ostentatious technical facility and ferocity… calm even in the most precarious moments. Perhaps the acoustic in the Philharmonic Hall—which I hadn’t experienced for some time—had something to do with the slight sense of détaché. All the Tees were crossed, all the Eyes were dotted and yet something was missing. (To have last heard the work with the new Munich Philharmonic Music Director Valery Gergiev the Mariinsky Orchestra and Denis Kozhukhin in the (literally) Great Hall of the Wiener Konzerthaus—part of a Prokofiev marathon of all five piano concertos—might have contributed to that, too.)

There’s not a woman that goes on stage—or not very many, at least—that doesn’t spend considerable thought on the dress she will wear. I’ve met a conductor who will even carefully match her wardrobe to the composer she will perform: I reckon a little black dress (something short) for Anton Webern; something more random for John Cage, and I’m looking forward to seeing what she’ll don for Boulez later this year, also at the Konzerthaus.

COMPOSERNAME, WORK_in_QUESTION, Y.Wang / Simón Bolívar SO / G.Dudamel DG J.Brahms, Symphony No.1, G.Wand / MPhil Profil Hässler

Lecherous old goats like the well-known click-bait master (a master-baiter, you might say) Norman Lebrecht will of course suggest or feel that the likes of Yuja Wang dress only to attract old men. Then again, there are those who sense sexism behind everything (like said master-baiter, when the Berlin Philharmonic has again neglected to make a woman their chief conductor), and certainly behind writing about a woman’s dress. Well, put a fork in either of those types: when Yuja Wang goes on stage (ditto Frau Mutter or Renée Fleming), a dress report is mandatory.

Dress report: Full length midnight-purple gown, skin-tight, with a few sparkles; extraordinary conservative by her standards, with only a left shoulder asymmetrically exposed, and windows on the right side, at the height where a less lissome person’s love handles would be.

Encores came, and often they (or generally the smaller pieces) are the most fun Moments of Wang: Horowitz’s Carmen Fantasy was absurd as in: bloody amazing. Frivolous were the contrasts in Arcadi Volodos’ take on Mozart’s ‘Turkish March”—something that sounded like an inspired collaboration between Earl Wild and Louis Moreau Gottschalk. Fun was being had.

I didn’t so much look forward to a Brahms First Symphony, to be honest… especially knowing so little about the conductor and so much about the orchestra’s occasional habit of not playing ball, when they are not lead by someone they greatly approve. I was proven wrong, but subtly. Michał Nesterowicz didn’t go in for individual fingerprints on the score, which is as likely a good thing as it is not. Nor, it seemed, for much personality. But all movements were performed with some vim and cohesion and morale and the whole symphony, broad and broadly enjoyable, confirmed that this is probably the greatest First Symphony ever written. (What’s the serious competition, anyway? Shostakovich I suppose… and anyone else?) The concert master was laying it on thick in his solo moments in the second movement, but did it well. A set of delicious piano pizzicatos stood out in the third movement. Nesterowicz ended it with plenty oomph and a lyrical stretch and in its unspectacular way, the whole thing had been really very good.

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On Forbes: 11 Recordings To Remember Lorin Maazel By

“Aren’t you afraid I will kick the bucket?” When he was appointed as music director of the Munich Philharmonic starting in 2012/13—a mildly contentious appointment in the wake of Christian Thielemann being bungled out of town—Lorin Maazel told the audience at the press conference (to much laughter) that he had posed this pointed question to the musicians and officials who lured him to town. They weren’t, and he didn’t seem particularly worried, either. Fit, energetic, and with good genes—his father, as he often pointed out, lived to 106 and in fact passed on just in 2009—Lorin Maazel struck anyone who met him as having another decade or more in him. It turned out to be only...

Continue reading here, at Forbes.com

Lorin Maazel (1930-2014)

Lorin Maazel, world-striding conductor and consummate musicians' musician, died on Sunday morning, following an exhausting bout with pneumonia. He had already canceled most of his conducting engagements for the foreseeable future, and he had not been strong enough to conduct the operas at this summer's Castleton Festival. Still, the news came as a shock, that someone who had been making music professionally beginning over thirty years before I was born -- here he is as a young boy, conducting at Interlochen, in my home state of Michigan -- was now suddenly gone. The tributes have been universal. Over the years, we caught only a sliver of an epoch-spanning career, having reviewed Maazel with several orchestras, including the National Symphony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, the Vienna Philharmonic, and the Munich Philharmonic. His baton was laser-precise, which could make some of his interpretations too steely or overpowering, but one rarely complained of either sloppiness of execution or lack of self-confidence in his ideas. He knew what he wanted, and he got it, for better and, rarely, for worse. This trait made his collaboration with young musicians so good, in the orchestras he put together for the Castleton Festival. With older professionals, perhaps jaded by years of working with strong-headed conductors, it could backfire sometimes.

For this listener, where Maazel really excelled was as an opera conductor. Washingtonians were lucky in this regard when, in 2009, Maazel inaugurated a summer festival on the grounds of his family home in Rappahannock County. To get there, one drives on highways that become narrower and narrower as you move into more remote areas, eventually landing within view of the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The grounds played host to a menagerie of animals -- a camel (named Omar and fond of matzo), a zebra, and the fabled zonkey (the zebra's offspring with a donkey) -- where Maazel, I wrote then, reigned like Prospero on his island. It was a labor of love for Maazel and his entire family, from his wife, actress Dietlinde Turban-Maazel, to several of the Maazel children. In a move that showed he was all in, Maazel auctioned off the 1783 Guadagnini violin he had played for over 60 years, raising $1.1 million for the Castleton Foundation. The festival's first venue, a 130-seat theater with a tiny pit built in the family's house, was supplemented with eventually larger and more stable tent theaters, including the one where we sat out the 2012 derecho, in more than a little anxiety at the rippling roof.

It was only through the Castleton Festival that we were able to experience Maazel's excellent Puccini live, as he slowly made his way through the composer's works list here: La Fanciulla del West, Il Trittico, La Bohème, and this year's Madama Butterfly, which he was not able to conduct. The scope of the festival made chamber operas most suitable, and Maazel led excellent productions of many of Benjamin Britten's small operas in the festival's early years: Albert Herring, The Rape of Lucretia, the adaptation of The Beggar's Opera, and The Turn of the Screw. Based on the taste Maazel gave us last summer, it is regrettable that we will never have the chance to hear him conduct a full performance of Peter Grimes.

His ear was not infallible, for example in his attachment to Andrew Lloyd Webber's setting of the Requiem Mass and his self-funded and widely panned opera, 1984. He had an eye for innovation, though, conducting the music for two of the best cinematic versions of operas ever made, Francesco Rosi's sultry Carmen (with Julia Migenes and Plácido Domingo) and Joseph Losey's Don Giovanni (with Ruggero Raimondi, Kiri Te Kanawa, José van Dam, and Teresa Berganza). Other examples include leading the New York Philharmonic on a controversial concert tour to North Korea, and creating a version of Wagner's Ring "without words" with the Berlin Philharmonic. A sampling of some of our favorite recordings with Maazel is below, but we will hopefully have a more complete roundup of Maazel's recorded heritage soon.

Sibelius, Symphonies, Vienna Philharmonic, L. Maazel

Puccini, Il Trittico, L. Maazel

Mozart, Don Giovanni (film directed by Joseph Losey), L. Maazel

Ionarts-at-Large: Maazel's Warhorses

Every praise of Maazel from city or orchestra officials smacks of desperation, full of preemptive retaliatory barbs against Christian Thielemann; coded in language that stresses—beyond breaking point—the variety of repertoire that Maazel brings to the Munich Philharmonic. A worthy cause, variety, but undermined by programs like this:

Wagner: Tannhäuser Overture, Debussy: La Mer, Stravinsky: Le Sacre du Printemps. Warhorses, all of them, and connected by having nothing in common. Thielemann might not have done Le Sacre, and even if it hasn’t been played during his reign, it’s not the epitome of variety. Ditto Debussy, and the Wagner was performed only months ago, together with Bruckner’s Third Symphony, itself a repeat from the previous season. So much for double standards.

French & Russian Music (incl. La Mer), S.Celibidache / Munich Philharmonic EMI (11 CDs)

The redemption of Tannhäuser—the performance, not the repenting character—was its quality: slow and solemn but not ponderous, not profound but gorgeous, pockmarked by coughs, and just the thing for us as an in-concert curtain opener. Beautiful individual contributions from winds in particular were notable. After the deftly handled, lugubrious Wagner the wiry, energetic, visibly aging Maazel dove into La Mer: long on precision, short on atmosphere, the sinewy, brassy, bold interpretation featured nicely legislated cellos with an aftertaste of section signs. The loud ending was cheap but effective, as loud endings usually are. Le Sacre’s opening bassoon melody wail was pretty, more like Tristan Act III cor anglais, and not snarled, like a strangled Chinese goose. It was an opening full with anticipation and without fulfillment. The sallow John-Williams-memorial-interpretation was relieved by the onset of the famous rippled rhythmical beat at the heart of Le Sacre. Here accuracy pays dividends even where fire and inspiration are missing. The rest was surprisingly crude… surprising in part because you’d think that should suite the piece. It probably would, too, in a full-out-ballet production. In concert the effect depreciated the experience.

Ionarts-at-Large: MPhil Season Opening Concerts

After two introductory concerts (Mahler and Wagner/Bruckner), Lorin Maazel’s first season with the Munich Philharmonic was well under way in a variety—deliberately varied—of concerts. The inclusion of works by Bach, Schubert, Strauss, Stravinsky, Puccini, Fauré, and Ravel was no accident, it’s all part of the consistently stressed, heavy handed at times, repertoire-diversity that Maazel is meant to bring to the Munich Philharmonic. The less-than-subtle suggestion that that’s what was missing under his predecessor never far away. At least it’s a better narrative than the 82-year old, by now tottering Maazel being the future of the orchestra.

On the four-concert program on the 13^th, 14^th, 15^th, and 16^th of September (as if two or three weren’t enough) was Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No.5, Schubert’s Fourth Symphony, and Richard Strauss’ Also sprach Zarathustra. Bach, with the slightly silly inclusion of a harpsichord in the 2500 arena that is the Philharmonic hall of the Gasteig, is good to play for the orchestra, and they should do more of it by all means. It’s music that philharmonic audiences all over the classical world are increasingly deprived on, but shouldn’t. Eventually, as familiarity with the idiom is being re-introduced to the orchestra, it will be good to hear, too.

Schubert’s Fourth, “Tragic”, Symphony was next in this ‘travel-through-the-style-periods exercise’. It’s said that there is quite a bit of Schubert in Bruckner; on this occasion there was quite a bit of Bruckner in Schubert. The most tragic thing about the work is that

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Ionarts-at-Large: Maazel's Inauguration Concert in Munich v.2

No glitz, no speeches for the second of the two inauguration concerts of Lorin Maazel’s music directorship with the Munich Philharmonic—just music. Wagner and Bruckner: the Tannhäuser Prelude and Venusberg music, Tristan & Isolde Prelude and Liebestod, and then Bruckner’s Third Symphony. One last run-through before the orchestra is off to Lucerne to impress abroad.

They should impress, because as opposed to the spotty first night with Mahler Ninth, this second evening was thoroughly satisfactory.

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Ionarts-at-Large: Maazel's Inauguration Concert in Munich v.1

Thursday night was the official concert-inauguration of Lorin Maazel (82) as the new music director of the Munich Philharmonic. The mood in the Gasteig’s drab functionalism can’t ever be truly festive, with Mahler Ninth on the program, it took a turn to the downright morose. A good amount of the musical who’s who was there, and every critic who had to, or those who felt otherwise compelled. The audience didn’t quite follow suit: a few hundred bodies were missing to bring the 2500 seat Philharmonic Hall to capacity. But then Maazel really isn’t something very new to Munich audiences—many already know him from his ten years with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra (1993 – 2003)—and the enthusiasm in town for him is tempered. So tempered, indeed, that an outside PR agency has been hired to create a little more enthusiasm about his tenure. Maazel tov, as it were.

Although the MPhil is the city’s orchestra (as opposed to the state associated BRSO and the Bavarian State (Opera) Orchestra—state vs. city being an eternal feud between Munich and Bavaria), and this was purportedly a big event, the city’s culturally disinclined major was missing. Fortunately the new in-house hagiographer Elke Heidenreich, an author and TV personality of apparently local renown, was at hand to speak (without first introducing herself) a few laudatory, slightly banal words on the duties of a conductor in general and the abilities of Maazel in particular, peppered with third-hand anecdotes.

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A Trophy Wife for the Munich Philharmonic: Maazel Signs His Contract

Previously on this topic: Lorin Maazel succeeds Christian Thielemann in Munich
A Mahler Cycle And Uncomfortable Silence: The Munich Philharmonic in 2010/11

Today, at 11am CET sharp, Lorin Maazel signed the contract that will make him the new chief conductor of the Munich Philharmonic from 2012/13 until, God willing, 2014/15. This ends, for now, the saga that started with the botched contract renewal negotiations with Christian Thielemann, in the process of which the orchestra’s reputation has suffered considerably and which revealed most involved administrators and politicians as surprisingly inept. (Perhaps that’s what having to deal with “CT” brings out in people.)

Now Maazel. Who will be 82 years old when he begins his second Munich tenure—having led the BRSO from 1993 until 2002. Unkind souls might speak of ‘sloppy seconds’ for the Munich Phil, but the most prominent sentiment of the press conference with Maazel, chief cultural administrator Hans-Georg Küppers, Intendant Müller, and the mayor, Christian Ude was relief. The word was mentioned several times and in the refreshingly straight-forward introductory remarks of the mayor himself—not particularly a man of ‘high-brow’ culture but certainly concerned about the reputation of his town—said (in a single, long sentence): “Many thanks to Lorin Maazel, because it very much pleases the city, because it makes us proud, and because it very much relieves us that he has agreed to this commitment; therewith the international reputation of the Munich Philharmonic is now no longer in danger of entering a ‘critical period’. Instead we have guaranteed that an internationally preeminent figure that is well familiar with Munich can continue the successful path the MPhil is on and who will enthrall and captivate the orchestra and the audience.”

The question of money was on everyone’s mind. Mayor Ude said that no details would be disclosed but that in times where governments everywhere need to be particularly prudent with their expenses, he could affirm that the monetary parameters of Maazel’s contract did not exceed those of CT’s contract. Küppers confirmed that there were no outside sponsors involved in footing the Maazel-bill (as there had been, when he was at the BRSO). Thielemann wasn’t cheap, but Maazel is known to be even more expensive. Incidentally his price tag makes perfect sense in the US, where his ability to facilitate fundraising more than makes up for the healthy premium he generally asks for. It is that, not his sheer excellence or reputation, that has made him the alleged ‘most expensive conductor in the world’. Unfortunately that premium doesn’t make much sense in the fiscal-cultural environment of Germany and a city-run symphony—where the culture of private and corporate giving is different, not to say non-existent. In any case, if Maazel made concessions on the financial front, it is probable that the city made concessions on the ‘residency’ front. The official number is that Maazel will conduct 30 concerts in Munich, annually. But that’s a soft number which could apply to a host of scenarios. Most likely this will consist of six different programs conducted by the maestro in three blocks of two successive concerts with four performance each—plus a few kids-concerts, youth-events, and show-biz appearances like the annual Open Air shtick and a New Years bon-bon razzmatazz. The former all events that Thielemann, unable to hide his disdain for- and impatience with- such events, avoided like the plague. When Paul Müller mentioned the new-and-improved range of the repertoire, replete with the “masterpieces of modernity, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, and Bartók”, one wanted to interject: “Yes, modern, when Maazel was a young man.”

The atmosphere of the press conference was reasonably friendly; Maazel and Ude had managed to defray most tension with their mix of half-hearted candor and their genuinely sunny mood. And it’s admittedly difficult to ask someone like Maestro Maazel straight to his face whether he knows that he’s just the expensive fig-leave for the administration’s ineptitude over the last year. Maazel’s age was addressed ‘pro-actively’, as one might say: Never have I heard the word “future” so often as in this presentation of the Munich Phil’s new octogenarian boss. Future-this, future-that… and amidst that the calculatingly candid admission of Maazel that during negotiations he had asked whether the orchestra didn’t fear that he might kick the bucket: Laughter, and any possible questions about his age nipped in the bud. No jokes, therefore, about whether he had been second choice after Kurt Sanderling turned down an initial offer. Or about taking shovel and pick-ax uptown to dig out Knappertsbusch for another go at it.

Consequently the questions from the press were ingratiating lobs, not intended to open old wounds and letting bygones be bygones. Thielemann’s name came up once or twice. The only potentially charged question on whether Lorin Maazel would bring a record contract to the Munich Philharmonic (an item that was so important to the orchestra when they found Thielemann’s activities on that field lacking) was avoided with suave platitudes on ‘all options being considered’, everyone being ‘open about possibilities’, and ‘not ruling out eventualities if they arise’. Maazel initially wrapped humor around his slightly barbed response when he suggested that he had already 300-some recordings to his name. Küppers chuckled as if to say “Good one, Lorin”. But would the orchestra members—currently on tour in Japan with CT—have chuckled, too? Maazel having already saturated the market with two versions of everything surely doesn’t do the Munich Phil any good.

The fact remains that nothing, absolutely nothing that was purported to be the problem with Thielemann has been addressed with this succession. In fact, it is obvious that what the solution Maazel addresses is not something that Thielemann could not achieve, but merely the lack of Thielemann itself. The relieve at the conference didn’t stem from having found someone who will do all that CT did for the orchestra, plus A, B, and C. But someone who prevented the departure of CT from becoming an utter, outright disaster. Now it’s merely a stain. The hiring of Maazel, for all his qualities as an orchestra educator, remains a naked grab for name recognition that allows all the involved, including the orchestra, to safe face. The decision pro-Maazel had nothing to do with musical questions, but was solely a matter of the city convincing itself that it was, indeed, still, a ‘cultural metropolis’ of world rank. No wonder Küppers positively beamed when he entered the neo-gothic Ratstrinkstube with Maazel on his side like a hot young trophy-wife.


Maazel, a diplomat par excellance, plays along and tells them exactly what they want to hear. Asked, later on, if he would be willing to jolt the orchestra into action if they ever got into one of their complacent moods, he long-distance schmoozed himself around it, saying: “I didn’t know they were without fire. When I had the great pleasure of conducting them the last time, I found they had everything that a great orchestra needs to set fire to the world. If they haven’t it’s not because of any lack of vitality on their part. The musicians are first class and can be compared to any major orchestra in the world… It’s just that sometimes they have been overshadowed by the Vienna Philharmonic or the Berlin Philharmonic or the Philharmonia or the New York Philharmonic. And that’ll be my job: to give the concerts in the right places at the right time so that people recognize the true value of the orchestra.”

The idea—mentioned in asides and the less veiled in the press statement—that Maazel could make the Munich Philharmonic a more cosmopolitan orchestra and help it get its name out there is folly. If anyone could have established the Munich Philharmonic as an international force to be reckoned with it would have been CT, whose style and repertoire—focused, but less narrow than made out to be—played to its strengths and to a ‘story’. CT divided opinions, and strongly so, but so did and do most successful conductors. Divisive excellence and distinct individuality were more likely the Munich Philharmonic’s ticket to getting some international respect than a cosmopolitan blend of bland—inoffensive to all, exciting to no one—will be. Anyone who thinks otherwise is encouraged to read the reviews and comments about the Munich Philharmonic’s last US-tour with Lorin Maazel, or the one before that, with James Levine. To loosely paraphrase Norman Rockwell et al.: “Maybe we’ll bother going to hear Lorin (James) tonight to hear them with that third rate orchestra they’re in town with.” Back to the future, it is.


Asked if he would be willing to apply the necessary tension to the orchestra, because it seems to thrive on just that, Maazel puts on his most disarming, sunny smile, and croons with his wonderfully soft-sonorous voice: “Well, but that’s what I’m known for. What the Germans call Spannung. That’s my thing. I love music, I’m very enthusiastic about it and very passionate about it and every performance for me is a life-time experience in microcosm; I think we’ll get along very well. Musicians respond to that; in fact they ask for nothing more than to be inspired and to be challenged. And I’m the man to do that. I think.”


Good luck, Maestro.

Picture © Andreas Gebert

Four Lost Songs

Lorin (Varencove) Maazel has never been accused of being the most exciting orchestra leader (not in the last half century, at any rate), but this quintessential child protégé (conducting the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra at the tender age of nine, the NBC Symphony Orchestra at 11, and every other major U.S. orchestra before hitting puberty) is among the most competent conductors alive. Nothing that happens in an orchestra goes by him, and his control over the bands he conducts is probably second only to Boulez’s. If I didn’t cry a tear when he left the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in 2002 (replaced by Mariss Jansons), it was probably because the BRSO was not so much in need of being drilled to play well but rather inspired to play as if possessed and in more challenging repertory. There are, however, orchestras that can only benefit from his exactitude and attention to detail. The National Symphony Orchestra, for all its good qualities, is still such a body. This Thursday night they had their chance to showcase the amalgamation of their collaboration in an all-Richard Strauss program – and didn’t.

Metamorphosen, the “Study for 23 Solo Strings” and the first Strauss on the program can, ideally, be an ethereal, otherworldly experience that completely envelops the listener and transports us into the Straussian harmonic world somewhere far, far away. If the NSO’s twenty-three string players under Maazel didn’t, it was perhaps the labored, unidiomatic way in which they slowly advanced through the notes without leaving much behind in ways of conjured mystery or awe. The conductor Maazel (what a precise stick, though! he’s a joy to watch) prepped the players well enough, but I would have expected the violinist Maazel to have infused his players with a greater sense of emotion – even if Metamorphosen should have been considered the least important work of the night by the performers.

Other Reviews: Tim Page, Maazel and the NSO's Seductive 'Don Juan' (Washington Post, January 20)

The Four Last Songs of Strauss contain what must surely be one of the most beautiful phrases in all of music. Specifically in Beim Schlafengehen – these days generally sung at the third position. It is the proof of Strauss’s genius that he touches upon this phrase once, then one more time – less than two minutes in all – and lets go, never to use it again. Listen to what starts at about two minutes into the song, after the second stanza, with the violin solo, has a pre-climax on the word “Seele” (“Und die Seele unbewacht…”) and then encompasses the first two lines of “will in freien Flügen schweben / um im Zauberkreis der Nacht / tief und tausendfach zu leben.” Any lesser composer would have milked an entire career out of it. (No disrespect to Mr. Elgar, but such an example might be how the sublime Nimrod-phrase pops up in just about every other work of the Englishman.) Music that is this spine-tingling and gorgeous will impress under most circumstances. Unfortunately the soprano on duty seriously challenged that assumption. Held against such supreme – albeit all very different from each other – accounts of the Vier Letzte Lieder as Jessye Norman, Lisa Della Casa, Dame Elizabeth Schwarzkopf, Gundula Janowitz, and Renée Fleming, her contribution was simply foul.

Inferior breath control ruined musical lines despite Maazel’s already brisk pace, she sang into the ground in front of her (or alternatively the note stand), and despite her towering presence on stage (almost as tall as Maazel on the podium) she was drowned out by the orchestra most of the time. The soprano is supposed to soar here – not make the effort audible. Together with a somewhat inadequate contribution from the orchestra (only Nurith Bar-Josef’s solo in Beim Schlafengehen managed to please), this was a dud as disappointing as I’ve not before experienced from an NSO performance.

It wasn’t until after the actual performance that I noticed the leaflet in the program that pointed out that this had not been Katarina Karnéus singing (she had to cancel due to illness), but Nancy Gustafson who graciously filled in for her. That may go some way in explaining the mishap – but then again, it doesn’t, really. Ms. Gustafson’s bio is easily as impressive as Ms. Karnéus’s – and judging from her roles at the finest opera houses (including Daphne under Thielemann at the Deutsche Oper Berlin), the Four Last Songs should be well within her reach. I can’t imagine what went wrong, and I’d rather not spend any more time thinking about the performance, either.

Last week, modest Mozart was eradicated from the memory by wondrous Wagner. The performances of Don Juan and Till Eulenspiegel didn’t quite achieve what would in any case have amounted to a Herculean task, but they provided for a very amelioratory experience. Don Juan was muscular, throwing his weight into the music. Based on a lesser known retelling of the Don Juan story (poor Juan merely has so many girlfriends because they all turn out to be unfit for a future of domestic bliss chez Tenorio), Strauss packed it with good-hearted elements, lyrical moments, and an abrupt, unceremonious end. With Maazel and the NSO telling the story we heard an accentuated element of brashness in a bold Don Juan. It served to highlight the contrast between op. 20 and the op. 28 that followed – the lighter, sprightlier Till Eulenspiegel. The opening of Till already has a light gait. Just a little mud on the shoes in this performance but not enough to drag it down. The players seemed to enjoy themselves, and the collected hundred-plus crew made a merry noise, indeed. The many solo passages were largely mastered with aplomb.

Repeat performances take place today, Friday, and tomorrow, Saturday, at 1:30 PM.

R.Strauss, Four Last Songs, E.Schwarzkopf / G.Szell / Berlin RSO EMI

R.Strauss, Four Last Songs, L.Della Casa / K.Böhm / Vienna Philharmonic Decca

R.Strauss, Four Last Songs, J.Norman / K.Masur / Leipzig Gewandhaus O. Decca

The recordings of the Vier Letzten Lieder that must be heard are the first three I mentioned above. Norman (with Masur and the Gewandhaus, either with more Strauss or with the Wesendonk-Lieder on Philips) is not the most sensitive to the text, and she does not offer the most nuanced reading. But by God, in Beim Schlafengehen her big, creamy voice is the most gorgeous thing ever to have come from a human throat, and Masur is there with her, all the way. She seems to take all four songs in one breath, no matter how slow Masur gets. “The Classic” is Schwartzkopf's reading. For reasons of sound quality and orchestral accompaniment her second, 1965, recording with George Szell (EMI GrOC) is usually chosen over the one where Otto Ackermann accompanies her in 1953 (EMI Historical Recordings). It’s a smidgen overrated but must be heard, all the same. Lisa Della Casa, Strauss’s favorite Arabella, has vocal beauty in scores and takes the songs in the original order under the guiding baton of Karl Böhm (Decca Legendary Performances). A brook to Norman’s stream, a deer to Norman’s elk – the connoisseur’s choice. Janowitz under Karajan (DG Originals) is the most different. A voice of flattened silver, perhaps with tin, she flitters along with more vibrato than most and better breath control than all but Norman.