Richard Strauss' "Ein Heldenleben", performed by the WDR Symphony Orchestra under the baton of its then chief conductor Semyon Bychkov. Recorded in September 1998 at the Kölner Philharmonie.
Historical recording from the WDR Classic Archive.
Richard Straus - A Hero's Life op. 40
00:00:50 The Hero
00:04:16 The hero's adversary
00:14:00 The hero's companion
00:20:44 The hero's forest
00:31:20 The Hero's Works of Peace
00:26:09 The Hero's World Escape and Consummation
WDR Symphony Orchestra
Semyon Bychkov, conductor
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○ Introduction
After his "Till Eulenspiegel", Richard Strauss was inspired by literary models several more times: in 1896 he completed "Also sprach Zarathustra", probably the first tone poem based on a work of philosophy. With Don Quixote (1897), he again took a figure from the narrative world literature. Strauss then followed a more general poetic idea: the notion of the hero - the free human being caught up in the struggles of existence, who must confront hostility, bring his works into the world, complete himself. The work bears clear autobiographical traits - evident in the second half, in which themes from other tone poems by Strauss are echoed. The "Heldenleben" is the tonal balance sheet of the artist's own fate, which an admirer of Strauss, the French writer Romain Rolland, compared with the imaginary hero of Beethoven's "Eroica": "The old, revolutionary features have disappeared, and like the outer world, the hero's enemies [...] occupy a large space [...]. There is furthermore in 'Heldenleben' a scourging contempt, an evil laugh, such as we never find in Beethoven. Little goodness." The hero reveals himself in the powerfully sweeping E-flat major theme; in the counterpart, "Des Helden Gefährtin" (The Hero's Companion), Strauss's wife Pauline Strauss-de Ahna is meant - in the form of the soulful solo violin, which unites with the hero in a duet. Beforehand, however, the "hero's adversaries" appear like a caricature: know-it-all gentlemen of criticism with pointed, unattractive, "jarring" (according to the score) contributions that displace the hero's theme in the bass. The "flight from the world" becomes a spiritual exaltation - represented with a quotation from "Also sprach Zarathustra".
(Text: Oliver Buslau)