To many, Richard Strauss (1864-1949) is still the example of a wrong composer, of someone who would have liked to associate himself with Hitler's regime. Indeed, Strauss was chairman of the Musikkammer for a while, but he was never a Nazi sympathizer. Moreover, Strauss was too stubborn for the Nazis and so he was quickly sidetracked. During the war, Strauss withdrew to Garmisch, where he fled the
… barbarisms of the war by devoting himself to Mozart, in whose music he saw a kind of remedy for the misery. Three of the four concerts recorded here are testimonials to that interest. They are short works, cast in a kind of neo-classical guise à la Mozart, but at the same time full of typical late Strauss twists. The nicest are the "Duett-Concertino for clarinet and bassoon", based on Andersen's "The Swineherd" and the "Horn Concerto No. 2", written as a companion piece to the "Horn Concerto No. 1, Op.11, composed in 1882. ", a work that still lacks Strauss's own style. The aforementioned works are very charming, but lack the intensity of pieces created in the same period as "Metamorphosen" and the "Vier Letzte Lieder". The various soloists give good lectures here, accompanied by the Vienna Philharmonic under André Previn. (JvG) _more