Learning from Books

One of the major topics of the London Book Fair this year, as indeed in many previous years, concerns the digitisation of books and how tha...

A Slew of Strauss

Richard Strauss's 150th birthday has spurred a great slew of recordings, some new, some re-released. The trend reaches a particularly pr...

Beyond the Fairytale

I have always loved Die Frau ohne Schatten , since the moment I first heard the Act II finale, 'Barak, ich hab' es nicht getan!'...

Bow Tie and Hydrangeas

Spotting Edward Steichen's 1906 portrait of Richard Strauss in my presentation for the Royal Opera House's Insight Evening about  Di...

My dear Doctor Strauss

Writing a lot about Strauss means having a copy of The Correspondence between Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal  permanently by my s...

Strauss mit Strauss

It's Strauss all the time at Entartete Musik towers just now. I'm writing about Die Frau ohne Schatten for one of the broadsheets,...

A Strauss Wonder

Some pieces are a slow burn. The first time I heard Strauss's Eine Alpensinfonie it evaded me. It was the famous Karajan recording, the...

Helping Complete the Symphonic Picture

I'm guilty of oversights. Beethoven, Brahms, Mahler... it's a symphony trajectory I repeat ad absurdum . Of course I include the fin...

A Life for Music

In 1949, shortly before Richard Strauss's death, a film crew arrived at the Villa Strauss in Garmisch. They were there to make a short d...

Day 24 — Morgen

And so the Richard Strauss Lieder Advent Calendar comes to a close, albeit an open-ended one. Behind the last window is the 1894 Lied 'M...

Day 23 — Weihnachtslied

Strauss was apparently around six years old when he wrote this setting of the 18th-century poet Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart's ...

Day 22 — Im Abendrot (from the Four Last Songs)

The last of the Four Last Songs sets ‘Im Abendrot’ by Eichendorff, a poet to whom Strauss had first turned in 1876 for the texts of his two...

Day 21 — Die Frauen sind oft fromm und still

This is the final song from Strauss's 1887–88 Schlichte Wiesen , comprising five settings of Felix Ludwig Julius Dahn's poetry. Whil...

Day 20 – Blauer Sommer

As well as writing songs to mark his own marriage – the renowned Op. 27 set comprising ' Ruhe, meine Seele ', ' Cäcilie ', ...

Day 19 — Winterliebe

Strauss wrote two 'winter' songs, published together in his 1900 Fünf Lieder Op. 48. Unlike 'Winterweihe' (the fourth in th...

Day 18 — Gesänge des Orients

Strauss was no stranger to Orientalism, not only within Salome (1905), of course, but also in the less celebrated Die ägyptische Helena (192...

Day 17 — Ruhe, meine Seele!

Strauss's 'Ruhe, meine Seele!' is set apart by its staggeringly ingenious simplicity. Nothing is so restful as the slow but cert...

Day 16 — Drei Lieder der Ophelia

By 1918, when Strauss wrote this triptych of Ophelia's songs from Hamlet (in a German translation by Karl Joseph Simrock), he was a high...

Day 15 — Beim Schlafengehen (from the Four Last Songs)

We now reach the third of the Four Last Songs , though 'Beim Schlafengehen' was actually the first of the Hesse poems Strauss set. T...

Waltz's Rosenkavalier Coming to London

According to a tweet by the Royal Opera House's Director of Opera, Kasper Holten, Christoph Waltz's production of Der Rosenkavalier...