Richard the Second

Richard Strauss was a target almost from the start of his career in the 1880s, with the Brahmsians reviling him as Richard the Second, i.e., Wagner, his idol.

After the turn of the century, the Establishment took up the cudgels in response to the screechings and eroticism of his operas “Salome” and “Elektra.” Whereupon he was lambasted by the modernists for turning his back on dissonance in favor of Johann Strauss as well as the Classical era in his “Der Rosenkavalier,” whose success, another clique contended, he vainly tried to repeat in subsequent, sound-alike operas.

But whatever insults Strauss had to suffer, he kept being performed. His orchestral works have never been in disfavor among conductors or audiences for they are, above all, fabulous, voluptuous showpieces.

It is doubtful that the 16-year-old’s String Quartet in A raised many hackles. Strauss wrote a string quartet? Well, it could be said that he didn’t, that it was actually a collaborative effort by Beethoven, Schubert and Mendelssohn. Should prove a boggler at guess-the-composer sessions.

The piece surfaces via London’s Delme Quartet, which knocks it off with ruder-than-necessary vigor; ditto their treatment of the considerably superior (and likewise sole) String Quartet by Verdi (Hyperion 66317).

Schumann’s ghost inhabits the Sonata in E-flat for Violin and Piano, dating from 1887, when Strauss was 23. But there is Straussian melos as well in this overheated beauty, with its foretastes of “Don Juan” and “Heldenleben,” even the closing pages of “Ariadne auf Naxos.”

The elegant, restrained performance (on Philips 420 944) is by Pinchas Zukerman and Marc Neikrug, who actually bolster Strauss’ cause with a sizable cut in the overlong finale. In the accompanying Sonata in D of Prokofiev, however, the duo’s slow tempos and air of detachment rob the score of its inherent vitality.

The tone poems “Don Juan,” “Till Eulenspiegel” and “Death and Transfiguration” are presented with becoming swagger and virtuosity by the Cleveland Orchestra under Lorin Maazel on a mid-priced CBS reissue (44904). But the subtleties and lyric effusions of “Don Quixote,” arguably the finest of the tone poems, are shortchanged in the sluggish reading by Neeme Jarvi with the Scottish National Orchestra (Chandos 86310). Under the circumstances, the sensitive solo cello of Raphael Wallfisch counts for little.

The disc also offers a pretty, Schumannesque bit of Strauss juvenilia, the 1883 Romanze for cello. In addition, there are two songs: the noble, hugely impressive “Song of the Priestesses of Apollo” (1896), originally with orchestra, foreshadowing the final scene of “Salome,” and the familiar “Ruhe meine Seele” of 1894 for which the composer provided the ill-fitting orchestration heard here a half-century later. Both require a heftier voice than Felicity Lott’s bright soprano, but her expressive delivery carries the day in the “Song of the Priestesses.”

Another curiosity-- because of the music’s familiarity--is “Ein Heldenleben” (1898) in its perversely well-mannered, small-scale treatment by Andre Previn, who conducts the Vienna Philharmonic (Telarc 80180). Never has Strauss’ lusty alter-ego/hero seemed so self-effacing, even insipid.

More troublesome still is the accompanying work, the octogenarian composer’s Four Last Songs, where Previn’s underemphatic baton fails to provide a context in which soprano Arleen Auger can float Strauss’ glorious fancies.

Another prized work from the composer’s last days is the “Metamorphosen” for strings, in which he looks back with equal affection to Schoenberg’s “Verklarte Nacht” and his own “Rosenkavalier.” It is logically coupled (on Nimbus 5151) with Schoenberg’s moonstruck piece, both being handsomely executed by the English String Orchestra under William Boughton’s unobtrusively firm, loving guidance.

Good news, too, from the little British ASV label which couples (on CD 809) the splendid “Bourgeois Gentilhomme” Suite and the charming, if somewhat dated (in its tinkly neo-Baroqueries) Dance Suite after Couperin, both delivered with terrific snap, precision and warmth by the Chamber Orchestra of Europe under Erich Leinsdorf, a conductor shamefully underemployed by the recording companies these days.