When your tone poem is longer than any of Liszt's, you know you're in trouble.

Have been listening to this work fro 70+ years. and I get your point. I still concider it a masterpiece. The "resignation" section I think has the message that even heros are mortal.

Yes David, you are totally right, from an objective point of view. But omg, I love this piece, just because you sometise love bad food, eating a big bag of potato chips while you know it's bad and unhealthy, or even worse. Heard it twice life with Jansons and the RCO and that perfomances were gorgeous. Like a michelin star chef cooking just McNuggets and fries. That's why I sometimes like it! I love Strauss, too fat, too much, too horrible, but who else did that so well?

I agree with all you say. But years ago, in London, I heard Karajan conduct the Berlin Phil. in the work and it was spellbinding. It can work....

Just finished listening to the live relay from the Philharmonie with Petrenko and the Berliner Philharmoniker. Wonderful performance. I love the work, but there is a reason why my favourite Strauss tone poem is Death and Transfiguration, and that is its perfect length. Had Strauss restricted Heldenleben, Zarathustra, Alpine, Quixote, etc. to 26/27 minutes, he'd be the undisputed king of orchestral music! Surely it's not just me that thinks Ein Heldenleben seems longer than any Mahler symphony.

Yep, agreed about the last few minutes of Ein Heldenleben. I think Neeme Järvi’s version with the RSO is one of the better recordings. Bright sonics with an overall inspired performance.

Couldn't agree more! I always thought there was 20 minutes of actual music in this piece that got stretched out to almost an hour. In general, I think Strauss's shorter works (Four Last Songs comes to mind) work a lot better since you can enjoy the tunes without having to worry about the structure.

I love it up to the climax of the battle as the hero's theme emerges in triumphant glory. Even the Hero's Works section starts out stupendously with a thrilling statement of the Don Juan theme, but after that my interest flags(listening at home I've even fallen asleep only to be roused awake by the crescendo at the end.

YES! This work does have its absolutely gorgeous and wonderful moments but I always felt it was kind of stitched together from leftover musical snippets Strauss had lying around.

When the battle breaks out, there's that wonderful moment when, amidst blaring trumpets and pounding drums, the "beloved's" theme comes waltzing in (D Major). It's like Nell calling out to Dudley Doo-Right "Oh, do be careful out there, my darling Hero!..", or something like that. I LOVE that moment, which never fails to crack me up. But overall, I agree with your assessment of the work. LR

I actually like listening to this work.

Couldn't agree more; you're on a roll!

The point of The Hero's Work's part is to make absolutely sure that the audience knows who the hero is. Iit wouldn't do to leave a single person in doubt about that. So, you see; part 4 is necessary.

Bravo Dave. This work seems to be played live more than any of Strauss' other tone poems and is highly acclaimed, yet I have to admit I have never "got" it even after listening to live performances. Difficult to play, too; Tovey commented that it needed multiple rehearsals whereas an Elgar piece with similar orchestration fell into place at once. But then I also feel that Also Sprach Zarathustra is 1 minute of brilliant opening followed by 30 minutes of less memorable stuff. (Pieces that don't quite live up to their openings might make an interesting subject for discussion; Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto? In both this and ASZ the arresting opening simply disappears from the rest of the work.)

I've always liked "Ein Heldenleben" well enough as a blockbuster sonic experience - but have found it really helpful to ignore the storyline altogether. The Strauss piece that really makes me roll my eyes so far back in my head they've threated to get stuck is his bizarre "Symphonia Domestica". So silly. It goes on so long you start to hope for a divorce. Then there's "Schlagobers", which is a whole other level of dreck. Other than that, that Strauss guy was pretty good.

The false advertising is the point.

without that final crescendo, I wouldn't even know that the piece is still going on :)

Even though you're picking on a personal favorite, I do see your point. It could have been abbreviated, but the same could be said of a great many notable compositions. I enjoy a good performance all the way to the end, though I agree that the strongest moments come earlier.

I remember hating that interminable violin solo the first time I heard Heldenleben almost 50 years ago, and I still can't stand it.

Fascinating series! Another tough nut to crack is Rachmaninov's 3rd symphony, of which I've heard all of one recording that "gets it" (Ormandy's)...

“Chubby the Critic” 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

Yes, less is more wasn't always part of Strauss's thinking. However, I find the overindulgence and extravagance very much part of the music's appeal.

Hello Dave! Great topic; especially this Strauss work. I have a suggestion though not really fit for this topic since there are good recordings of this work (maybe Serkins&Bernstein): But Beethoven's Choral Fantasy deserves some attention. I would not call the orchestration 'elegant'... but all in all this is a unique, fun, but hard piece. I think it's quite a challenge to get this work done right. You need a virtuoso pianist one who has some understanding of Beethoven's structure, a fantastic choir and solo, a good orchestra with good wind players with a crisp sound and a good conductor to harmonize all these together. Maybe I missed some video regarding this piece, but It's just a humble suggestion.

I think the only reason I enjoyed listening to this was because I heard it for the first time with Welser-Most/Cleveland (live). Normally, his tendency to rush through everything as if he had something better to do after the concert is irritating, but for Ein Heldenleben, it made for a more compact interpretation, and I actually really enjoyed it. I've listened to a few more recordings since then and they weren't at all as satisfying and definitely suffer from that drawn-out episodic drag. I'm glad I got that live performance though, one of the few outstanding Welser-Most moments as he normally gets Strauss right.

There is no question that Heldenleben is far from perfect but I still love it. He made orchestras sound really spectacular and Heldenleben is a great demonstration piece for great orchestras. Many conductors avoid it including George Szell. However Szell did play the Domestic Symphony which is also outrageous and very long. Many of the works by R. Strauss are too long including his most famous opera, Der Rosenkavalier. One more thought, Mahler's music is also very long especially the 3rd Symphony but most people do not complain about it. It is all a matter of taste and for me Heldenleben is a masterpiece but with plenty of flaws.

Many thanks, Dave, for cogently explaining exactly why I've never liked this piece. Simply put, it's a let-down. As for Romantic pessimism and resignation, there is at least one composer who managed to express that worldview--namely, Mahler. I conclude with a suggestion for "greatest projects ever"--Kempe's invaluable survey of Strauss orchestral music for EMI/Warner. No single conductor recorded as much Strauss orchestral repertoire and so well.

a work of which you could speak is undoubtedly Gliere's symphony no. 3 ''ilya murometz''....i knew this symphony for the first time with stokowski. knew that stokowski had made cuts in this work, I understood why....by listening to the ''original version''...what length in this work...! themes that are repeated without stopping, it becomes boring....I can understand why this work has had only a few versions...in any case, quite a contract when you decide to audition it.. ...!

Excellent analysis, Dave, it's how i feel about it. it gets programmed much too often, after the strong first part, it gets so boring and seems to go on forever, it's so self indulgent, yikes!

Litterature dialogues with music in this piece. I’ve always identified as an anti-hero. There are no retoric or metaphors, it is about a man, Strauss, who shows his human nature without misrepresentations.

Well, agree or not ,you rarely fail to entertai🎉nme 4:56

If Ein Heldenleben seems interminable, wait for Sinfonia Domestica and Alpine Symphony! At least Heldenleben has a character arc, as does Don Quixote which seems to go nowhere for quite a bit. It's as if post-Don Juan, Strauss wanted to give the listener the most bang for his buck.

The timing of this video is no less interesting than the proportion of Ein Heldenleben, Dave. You spend more than a half of the length explaining the part after the battle. This timing itself could constitute a criticism of the structures of this work by Strauss.