Strauss – Symphonia Domestica (LP, Speakers Corner)

Confident of his own historical importance, Richard Strauss made himself known to the US soldiers as Composer of the “Rosenkavalier” when they presented themselves at the front door of his Garmisch villa at the end of the war. More than four decades earlier, Strauss considered himself to be just as interesting as Napoleon or Alexander the Great and advocated his first-person Op. 40 (“Ein Heldenleben”) with the fact that he doesn’t see why he shouldn’t make a symphony about himself. In the “Sinfonia Domestica”, Op. 53, a musical get-together dedicated to the family in the living room, table and bedroom, Strauss cultivates a strikingly lyrical intonation. George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra stage a lively family idyll, a harmoniously assembled father, mother and son relationship that is cheerful, gallant, jubilant, but also quarrelsome. Strauss discoverers will find in the “Domestica” not only familiar late romantic musical language, but also clear echoes of an independent personal style that can be located as an original Strauss. Extensive intervals, lively play with the themes, surprising harmonic turns and, last but not least, the exuberant euphony are unmistakable characteristics of this refreshing music, which reflects the strong ego of its creator.