Donald Macleod considers Richard Strauss’s move to the Weimar Court Opera, and the ideas and philosophical discussions that led to Also sprach Zarathustra.

During Richard Strauss’s lifetime the sound and form of music altered radically. He was born at the tail end of the 19th century and saw the emergence of twelve-tone music and atonality from younger composers like Arnold Schoenberg and his pupil Alban Berg. Strauss belonged to a previous generation and his music came to be regarded as conservative in style, but at the start of his career, Strauss had been seen as something of a modernist, breaking the mould with his series of innovative orchestral tone poems, and with the dissonant sound world of operas such as Salome and Elektra.

This week Donald Macleod follows the young Strauss’s pathway leading up to and including the tone poems, seeing how an immersion in music across his formative years influenced his ideas about orchestral writing, as well as opening up opportunities that helped him to establish a professional career as a conductor.

After the disappointment of a lukewarm response to his first opera, Strauss was to discover that a promotion to the top position of music director would not be supported by the officials in Weimar.

Overture to Act 2, Guntram (excerpt)
Hungarian State Opera
Eve Queler, conductor

Prelude to Act 1, Guntram
Orchestra of Deutche Oper, Berlin
Christian Thielemann, conductor

Also sprach Zarathustra, op 30 , TrV 136
Chicago Symphony Orchestra
George Solti, conductor

Gesang der Apollopriesterin op 33
Karita Mattila, soprano
Berlin Philharmonic
Claudio Abbado, conductor Show less