And Another Thing

28 March 2009

Richard Strauss: the Bavarian Joker in the Pack

Richard Strauss died 60 years ago this year. Not only is he one of my top ten favourite composers, he is also the one I would most like to be cast away with on an island so that I could pluck out the heart of his mystery. His subtleties are infinite, especially his constant, minute innovations, always designed to improve existing models but rejecting crude revolutions, so noisily intrusive in his time. I would like to explore his early works, like the tone poem Macbeth and his symphonies, Brahmsian exercises never performed today, and get to know all his operas including the weird Guntram (1892) and his last great masterpiece Capriccio, written 60 years later.

But plucking that complex heart requires a knowledge of German. I recall the first time I saw Rosenkavalier, at the East Berlin opera house in 1955. It has since become one of the four works I regard as perfect musical plays, alongside Figaro, Carmen and La Bohème, and I relished it enormously at the time. But my next-door neighbour at the performance, old Birley, Eton headmaster and a notable Germanophile, said: ‘Oh, but to enjoy this delicious piece you must know German very well, to follow the slang, literary allusions and sheer comic devilry of the Marschallin’s lines, written by that genius Hugo Von Hofmannstal, and set to music perfectly by Strauss, who was fonder of a joke than any other composer.’ (Indeed there is a famous joke in the last ten bars of the opera when the black page, Mohammed, returns to pick up the handkerchief.) Birley added: ‘Oddly enough, though they collaborated perfectly, Strauss hardly ever met his best librettist. They did it all by correspondence, much the best way. Strauss thought him too domineering.’

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