STRAUSS, RICHARD  BIOGRAPHY

Richard Strauss enjoyed early success as both conductor and composer, in the second capacity influenced by the work of Wagner. He developed the symphonic or tone-poem to an unrivalled level of expressiveness and after 1900 achieved great success with a series of impressive operas, at first on a grand scale, but later tending to a more classical restraint. His relationship with the National Socialist government in Germany was at times ambiguous, a fact that protected him but led to post-war difficulties and self-imposed exile in Switzerland, from which he returned home to Bavaria only in the year of his death, 1949.

Operas

Richard Strauss created an immediate sensation with his opera Salome, based on the play of that name by Oscar Wilde. A collaboration with Hugo von Hoffmannsthal followed, with the operas Elektra and the even more effective Der Rosenkavalier in 1911, followed by Ariadne auf Naxos. Der Rosenkavalier (The Knight of the Rose) remains the best known of the operas of Richard Strauss, familiar in excerpt from its famous concert waltz-sequence. From Salome comes the orchestral 'Dance of the Seven Veils', an important moment in the drama. The late opera Die Liebe der Danae, completed in 1940, may also be known in part from orchestral excerpts.

Orchestral Music

In the decade from 1886 Strauss tackled a series of symphonic poems, starting with the relatively light-hearted Aus Italien (From Italy) and going on to Don Juan, based on the poem by Lenau, the Shakespearian Macbeth, Tod und Verklärung (Death and Transfiguration), Till Eulenspiegel a study of a medieval prankster, Also sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spake Zarathustra) , based on Nietzsche, a series of fantastic variations on the theme of Don Quixote and Ein Heldenleben (A Hero's Life).

Concertos by Strauss include two for the French horn, an instrument with which he was familiar from his father's eminence as one of the leading players of his time. There is an early violin concerto, but it is rather the Oboe Concerto of 1945, revised in 1948, that has impressed audiences.

Vocal Music

In common with other German composers, Strauss added significantly to the body of German Lieder. Most moving of all, redolent with a kind of autumnal nostalgia that is highly characteristic, are the Vier letzte Lieder (The Four Last Songs).