Given the popularity of the Suite from Der Rosenkavalier recorded here -- it was made in 1944, during Richard Strauss' own lifetime, by Artur Rodzinski -- the only surprising thing about this pair of Strauss suites from the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra under director Manfred Honeck is that nobody has done it before. The Suite from Elektra is, you learn, "conceptualized" by Honeck and "realized" by Czech composer Tomás Ille. One might be suspicious of this language, but Honeck provides his own notes with detailed ...
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Given the popularity of the Suite from Der Rosenkavalier recorded here -- it was made in 1944, during Richard Strauss' own lifetime, by Artur Rodzinski -- the only surprising thing about this pair of Strauss suites from the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra under director Manfred Honeck is that nobody has done it before. The Suite from Elektra is, you learn, "conceptualized" by Honeck and "realized" by Czech composer Tomás Ille. One might be suspicious of this language, but Honeck provides his own notes with detailed explanations of how he heard the opera and its orchestral realization, and indeed the characterizations are vivid. The Rosenkavalier suite is perhaps even better: you could sample anywhere on this album, but plunge in at the end, with the opera's great waltz sequences: this kind of thing has always been the Pittsburgh Symphony's bread and butter, and it's a delightful finale in this form, a sort of concentrated waltz happiness. Pause also to appreciate the superb live sound from Pittsburgh's...
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