The over-resonant but spacious and clear acoustic of the Caird Hall, Dundee, suits the plush romantic sound of Strauss's Aus Italien, not strictly the first of his tone-poems, but the first of his orchestral works in which one can recognize the later and greater master of scene-painting and atmosphere. He called it a ''symphonic fantasy'' and its four-movement form relates to the Italian Symphony of Mendelssohn, even though in the first movement, ''On the Campagna'', it is easy to detect the beginning of a swing to the Lisztian concept of the symphonic-poem. This is the best movement in the sense that it contains the most pointers to the mature composer. No one would claim that it is 'great' Strauss, but I find it very attractive and entertaining. It is surprising that more concert-planners, looking for ways of livening their programmes without alienating their audience, do not include it.
I have always loved the old Vienna Philharmonic/Krauss recording of Aus Italien (Decca—nla), but an up-to-date version has long been needed and Jarvi and the SNO have provided it, revelling in the 22-year-old composer's mastery of instrumentation and his sensitive treatment of solo woodwind and brass. Jarvi provides the necessary big gestures in the first movement and skilfully builds the climax of the third movement, where (with the advantage of hindsight) one can detect the embryonic operatic composer. Structurally, the weakest movement is the second, ''In the ruins of Rome'', where the young Strauss was too diffuse in his control of his ideas, especially compared with the way the mature Elgar handled similar subject-matter 16 years later in In the South. Yet, oddly, it is in this movement that listeners may most be reminded of Elgar in the delicacy and fancifulness of the scoring (to be strictly accurate, of course, it is Elgar who reminds us of Strauss). Strange, too, to think that the Munich audience a century ago hissed and whistled the Neapolitan finale, in which Strauss has witty and comparatively restrained fun with the tune of Funiculi, funicula. Jarvi and the SNO are in lively form throughout, and the recording is wide-ranged and full though, as I say, some may find it too resonant.
As in all the discs of this Chandos Strauss cycle, the orchestral work is accompanied by Felicity Lott's performance of a selection of Strauss's orchestral songs. Here she sings four love-songs and is in her best silvery voice, combining rapture and tenderness, and conveying especially the tension and mystery of Befreit, at the same time demonstrating what a major song it is.'