Richard Strauss - Edgard Varèse

Ein Heldenleben - Amériques

Ingo Metzmacher / Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin

Label: Challenge Classics
Format: CD
Barcode: 0608917264425

Catalog number: CC 72644
Releasedate: 12-09-14

This CD records both works in the rarely played first versions. Strauss originally let his “Heldenleben” fade out into stillness – an eloquent commentary on the cliché idea of bravado heroism. Varèse, however, demanded 142 musicians for his “Amériques” in the original version. There are also some instruments with exotic effect in the percussion such as cyclone whistle, steamboat whistle and crow call, which were eliminated later. The original version leads closer to the sources of Varèse’s way of thinking in music and demonstrates that he did not withdraw abruptly from the ambient tradition, but drew his compositions from it through transformation.

An exciting and unique coupling of two orchestral masterpieces by two apparently distant composers of the beginning of XXth Century
Varèse met and studied with Strauss in Berlin: we can feel the latter's influence in the former's orchestral writing virtuosity.
Both works are recorded here in their unusual, original versions.
Once more Ingo Metzmacher proves to be a great innovator in music programme and a refined connoisseur of hidden links in musical history.

Even though the title Ein Heldenleben (A Hero' Life) may not suggest it, both symphonic poems recorded on this disc were dreams of the future at the time of their premieres. The elaborate soundscapes of big orchestras - Varèse's original version of the Amériques requires 142 musicians! - were unheard of at the turn of the century and even in the 1920s.

New sounds and exotic instruments, however, not only push musical understanding, but also allow the audience to catch a glimpse of a composer's life and experiences. Strauss thus gives us his ideas about certain things and persons in his immediate surroundings, while Varèse invites the audience with steamboat whistles and crow calls to experience Paris as he did: the lonely fog horns, the shrill whistles and the sense of adventure America has given him since his childhood days.

Des Helden Widersacher