Wall to wall Richard Strauss: a music review by Fraser Beath McEwing
Before I go into raptures about the sound of the Australian World Orchestra and the remarkable coup to entice virtually-retired Zubin Mehta to conduct it again, I have to question the choice of an all-Richard Strauss program.
Zubin Mehta conducts the AWO Photo: Prudence Upton
Although there are plenty of examples that show Strauss far more interested in music and musicians than the Second World War and remaining loyal to Jewish friends, musicians and composers, the stigma of being compliant to the Third Reich has, to a degree, created disquiet among Jewish audiences. And since the Opera House and SSO are strongly supported by the Jewish community, maybe a full concert of Richard Strauss was not the best choice.
Moreover, why would Zubin devote the Australian World Orchestra’s whole Sydney concert to any single composer? If you love Richard Strauss (I hold up my hand), you were in for a great concert, but if not, there was nothing else on the menu.
Having got my grumps out of the way, let’s talk music. Although Strauss composed around 140 works, including a couple of early symphonies and some wonderful lieder, he was a master of the tone poem. The AWO offered three of them, especially significant because Zubin Mehta is a renowned interpreter of Richard Strauss. He is quoted as saying that he became a conductor ‘because deep down I wanted to conduct Richard Strauss’s tone poems’.
My earlier comment about too much Richard Strauss notwithstanding, there is no more apt composer to test the capabilities of an orchestra. The AWO, in combination with the new acoustics of the Opera House, provided a performance that was simply breathtaking. In a musical sense, this was a team of champions, able to play in perfect unison yet clearly enunciating their voices in the mix.
The maestro at work Photo: Prudence Upton
The orchestra was founded in 2011 by artistic director and chief conductor Alexander Briger AO, its mission to bring together Australia’s finest classical musicians tenured by the world’s leading orchestras to create something unique. And this it has, with praise being heaped upon it every time it performs, made all the more remarkable because the musicians who make it up have never played together before they sit down for their first rehearsal.
When Zubin Mehta walked hesitatingly across the stage to his podium chair, the enthusiasm of the audience would have rivalled any football match. Here was a man obviously weighed down by his years, with limited physical movement, yet still able to bring forth magic with some of the most complex music in the repertoire.
The concert opened with Don Juan Op.20, a work from Strauss’s early period when he was developing his talent for the tone poem. In this case, he drew references directly from an unfinished play by Nikolaus Lenau who was attempting to retell the story of the legendary Renaissance-period Don Juan. Lenau interpreted Don Juan’s promiscuity as a perfectly reasonable search for the ideal woman. But that didn’t save the Don from eventually falling into melancholy and then purposely losing a duel in which he was finished off by the father of his final conquest. The end of the work was quiet and heart wringing.
Don Juan illustrated the remarkable orchestral colour Strauss was able to create, along with the sudden and delightful habit of giving a brief concerto solo to a violin or oboe to illustrate a scene or mood.
A personal thank you to his audience Photo: Prudence Upton
Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks Op. 28 fitted nicely as a companion piece to Don Juan. It is a musical documentary of a joker, a rather annoying fellow who rides around on his horse creating a general nuisance. Strauss directly and light-heartedly depicts some of Till’s escapades until the authorities catch up with him, charge him with blasphemy and march him off to the gallows – and there, the mood becomes a trifle more serious. But Till’s spirit returns for one final laugh suggesting, perhaps, that the joker always has a role to play.
A Hero’s Life Op. 40 is the last and longest (about 50 minutes) of Strauss’s tone poems and calls for a huge orchestra to perform it. The AWO had to stump up five trumpets, eight horns, two harps, four each of the winds, two tubas and two tympani. And, oy vey, nine bull fiddles! I’d never seen that number in an orchestra before. Even with the new, roomier stage, it was a squeeze. Such forces applied to A Hero’s Life provided a pinnacle for showing off this unique orchestra, to say nothing of the demanding and concerto-like violin solo convincingly played by principal violin Daniel Dodds in the midst of all the excitement.
The music is probably best described as a moving picture of the hero in six stages of his life.
Although possessing a healthy ego, Strauss rejected the idea that he was the hero, insisting it was a creation of the imagination. We looked in on the hero as he stood before us, faced his adversaries, loved his companion, battled in a war, worked for peace and finally retired. Beethoven’s hero in his third symphony, the Eroica, could have come from the same genesis as Strauss’s.
Fraser Beath McEwing is a pianist, commentator on classical music performance and is a founding member of The theme & Variations Foundation which assists talented young Australian pianists. His professional background is in journalism, editing and publishing. He is also the author of five novels and a Governor of the Sir Moses Montefiore Home. A body of his work can be found on
