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Site review by Castor April 13, 2007
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Performance: Sonics (MC): |
Strauss wrote Josephs Legende for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in 1912 during the period following the composition of his Alpine Symphony while he was also working on the revision of Ariadne auf Naxos and the 1st Act of his next opera Die Frau ohne Schatten. Many passages in Josephs Legende bring to mind the music these contemporaneous works.
Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Count Harry Kessler planned the ballet’s scenario; the former producing, as so often, a lofty intellectual and mystical conception, while the latter dealt with the complex scenic demands.
Strauss himself conducted the glittering premierè by the Ballets Russes at the Paris Opéra in 1914, and Beecham followed with sold-out performances in London later that year, but the work soon disappeared from the repertoire, although the Symphonic Fragment that Strauss salvaged in 1947 is occasionally performed. Reasons for the subsequent neglect began with the absence of Nijinsky in the title role, following his split with Diagilev, the costs of the lavish staging and finally the outbreak of the 1st World War (Strauss never received his 6000 gold francs conducting fee from Diaghilev!).
A further obstacle to both staged and concert performances is that the work calls for a gigantic orchestra including six horns, four trumpets, four trombones, quadruple woodwind including a beautiful contrabass clarinet (heard at the opening of track 37), harps, celestas, piano, organ and a threefold division of violins.
From the outset the anti-religious Strauss was uncomfortable with the musical depiction of the ‘God-seeker Joseph’ whom he found boring, and was much happier composing the more erotic sections of the piece such as the Dances of the Veiled and Unveiled Women (tracks 8-14), the gorgeous Dance of Sulamith (tracks 15-16) and the music associated with the attempted seduction of Joseph by Potiphar’s wife. However, Ivan Fischer and his orchestra make even the weaker sections of the score sound convincing by their well-judged tempi and ravishing playing.
There have been two previous recordings of the ballet on CD. The first in 1988 by Hiroshi Wakasugi and the Tokyo Metropolitan Orchestra (Denon), the second in 1999, a live recording by Giuseppe Sinopoli and the Dresden Staatskapelle (DGG). Both had their good points, but neither can match the performance or recording quality on offer here.
Ivan Fischer is on record as saying that this work is a masterpiece that should be in the repertoire of all major orchestras. Even if one questions that view, and I do not, Fischer’s totally committed interpretation, the sumptuous playing of the Budapest Festival Orchestra and the superb sound achieved by Jared Sacks and Hein Dekker in the Palace of Arts, Budapest make this the recording of the work the one to own.
Channel’s presentation is also excellent. A fifty-one-page booklet is provided in the digi-pak containing a detailed synopsis of the ballet and the action indicated by no less than 70 tracks.
This is an essential purchase for all Straussians.
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Copyright © 2007 Graham Williams and SA-CD.net
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Review by jlaurson October 10, 2007 (5 of 5 found this review helpful)
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Performance: Sonics (S): |
Iván Fischer, Richard Strauss, Josephs Legende (from WETA.org)
In his introduction to his latest recording, Iván Fischer points out that the score of Richard Strauss’ Josephs Legende is frightfully difficult. I’ve no doubt that’s true – especially when no player in an orchestra is likely to have seen, much less played, a single note of it before. Fischer goes on to suggest that Josephs Legende, which he calls beautiful (yes!), rich (yes!), and especially lyrical (yes!), should be considered among Strauss’ best compositions.
No.
If “best” is supposed to denote anything meaningful at all, then Josephs Legende is not likely included. But that’s not to say that it isn’t a wonderful work. There are not that many clunkers in Strauss’ output to begin with, and Josephs Legende is certainly a (much) better work than Friedenstag, Die Schweigsame Frau, Die Göttin im Putzzimmer (“The Goddess in the Boudoir”), Festmusik for the 2600th Anniversary of Japan, or even the Sinfonia Domestica. Nor is it to say that it wouldn’t be enjoyed more than some “better” works. I.e. more than Elektra by those who like their Strauss lyrical. Or better than those who would love Die Frau ohne Schatten were it not for want of time.
Josephs Legende is a Sergei Diaghilev commission for his Ballets Russe, based on a libretto concocted by Hugo von Hofmannsthal and the colorful Count Harry Kessler, that jack of all trades, diplomat, and friend of seemingly every important or famous personality of the early 20th century. Strauss accepted the idea – but the religious story didn’t sit right with him. More labor than love might have gone into Josephs Legende, even as Strauss made sure that the music displaced any all-too mystical or religious aspects of the story with earthy eroticism. The result is a work that, composed on Elektra and Salome’s heels, is less ambitious than either, shorter, less varied, but not much less enticing. If Elektra has curdled blood flowing in its veins, and Salome a sweet poison, Josephs Legende is fueled with Viennese Mélange .
You can hear ideas in it that foreshadow Die Frau ohne Schatten. An unkind, but hardly inaccurate, description of Josephs Legende would be that of a test-run for the latter opera. Set to a story of Hofmannsthal that was much more to the liking of Strauss.
The ballet, when it was finally finished and performed under Strauss’ own direction on May 14th, 1914 in Paris, was a success. Even if Vaslav Nijinsky, for whom this “least danceable music possible” was created, was no longer part of the production after he had hastily married Romola De Pulszky, which caused the outraged (and jealous) Diaghilev to fire him on the spot. Michail Fokine (choreography) and Léonide Massine (as Joseph) substituted. With over 130 performances since, the ballet was hardly a failure. But even though it was resuscitated after World War I, it seemed to symbolically draw the curtain on the 19th century (to paraphrase Michael Kennedy) and has spent most of its time since on the sidelines of Strauss’ musical output.
A shame for this lusty and lush hour of opera-meets-dance-meets-tone poem that sends Straussian climaxes through the over-sized orchestra by the minute. Even vigorous repeat listening have not yet turned me off Josephs Legende. I’ve been enjoying, alternatingly, the Giuseppe Sinopoli / Dresden Staatskapelle recording (DG; available as an “Arkiv-CD” in the United States) and the new SACD recording of Iván Fischer and his Budapest Festival Orchestra (Channel Classics).
Either one of these – and the third available recording on EMI with Rudolf Kempe’s complete orchestral Strauss, also with the Staatskapelle – are excellent. The Staatskapelle has Strauss in its blood and Sinopoli sweeps through the score in broad grandeur, with sumptuous expanse and gravitas. Fischer, meanwhile, is a touch fleeter, lighter. More tone-poem with the former, more a hint of ballet with the latter. If Fischer could be pointed to as being more delicate it’s not to say that Sinopoli muddles anything. Both bring out all the voices wonderfully… in an orchestra among the biggest that Strauss ever summoned. (Which is saying something for both, the conductors and the size of the orchestra.)
This Strauss beckons to be enjoyed on disc – lest you happen to stop by in Hamburg where the Staatsoper will actually put on the ballet with John Neumeier’s choreography.
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