Those of us who were learning our repertory during the early 1950s, eagerly collected the Decca LPs of the Strauss tone-poems emanating from Vienna under the authoritative baton of Clemens Krauss. At about the same time, he was giving us outstanding interpretations of opera at Covent Garden. On my first visit there, as early as 1947, I heard Fidelio under Krauss’s electrifying baton when the Vienna State Opera visited the house that September. Krauss was taken from us all too early, dying of a heart attack at the age of 61 in 1954, just when Bayreuth, where he conducted (memorably – in 1953) was about to take him to its heart. Even today, with all our historical interest, Krauss is never given quite his due except by those who have always been devoted to his cause. Mike Ashman is one of the latter, as his superb essay on the conductor here proves.
Of course, Krauss’s relationship with Strauss was the most important of his latter years, leading to his partly writing the libretto to Capriccio, the composer’s last opera. These discs, made shortly after the composer’s death, confirmed his supremacy in Strauss interpretation at the time. The Record Guide of 1955 gave two stars – the highest accolade – to all but two of the recordings of the tone-poems, one to the others and to the Salome (regrettably the last of the recordings, made in March 1954 just two months before the composer’s untimely demise). The authors were enamoured of the engineering as much as of the readings. Nowadays the former, especially where the string quality is concerned in the earlier of the recordings (particularly Also sprach Zarathustra), leaves a lot to be desired – though Paul Baily at EMI has done his appreciable best to ameliorate the old tapes – but I believe that the performances have so much to commend them as a set that anyone interested in Strauss will want them.
Their chief successor was the splendid set made in Dresden by Kempe (EMI, 12/92), and Karajan, of course, recorded these works at least once. Krauss combines the virtues of both those eminent Straussians. His readings have the structural coherence and tremendous cogency evinced by Kempe, but also the inner energy and wonderful ear for detail that distinguishes Karajan’s readings. Despite being in mono, so much detail can be heard in these quite close-miked, immediate recordings, and nothing seems to have escaped the ears of conductor or producer (Victor Olof) and balance engineers who are the same for the whole series.
The performances that stand out, to my mind, are Krauss’s masterly advocacy of Aus Italien and Symphonia domestica (here coupled with a virtuoso account of the Bourgeois gentilhomme Suite by the VPO of the day): scores that in lesser hands can sound mundane shine forth as indubitable masterpieces. Ein Heldenleben is also thrilling, with Willi Boskovsky making the Hero’s beloved as sensuous and sensual as she ought to be. Don Quixote is even better, indeed a classic, and one that has as – along with all these performances – been unavailable for far too long. Even more than the famed 1948 Tortelier reading with Beecham, now on EMI References (12/95), the great Pierre Fournier (the subject of this month’s Reputations on page 42) and his conductor here seem to capture the essence of the piece, and the 1953 recording is among the best in the set.
Goltz was a sought-after Salome of the day, and gives a thoroughly erotic, depraved account of the opera’s final scene (as she did on stage), her diction keen, her tone bright and childlike – not quite the equal of Welitsch but very close. Krauss, of course, is in total command, in a work which he had first conducted in 1920, and the mono recording is here very good. What a pity, though, we couldn’t have had the set complete (it has never appeared on CD, to Decca’s shame, though I gather Testament are hoping to reissue it shortly), not least because it houses Patzak’s famed Herod of which we have here only a glimpse. But happily that is put to rights by the issue this month of the contemporaneous Bavarian Radio broadcast of the work (see page 104), also with Patzak as Herod.
I earnestly hope anyone interested in Krauss and/or the history of Strauss interpretation will obtain these CDs. Start, if you like, with the Symphonia domestica/Bourgeois gentilhomme coupling and I am sure you will be eager to have the rest.'