Ariadne auf Naxos. Richard Strauss
2006; Oxford University Press; Volume: 22; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1093/oq/kbi082
ISSN1476-2870
Autores ResumoAriadne auf Naxos returned to the Salzburg Festival in 1954 after a lapse of twenty-eight years. Since then it has become, after Der Rosenkavalier, the most frequently performed Strauss opera at the festival. Recordings from three productions—1954, 1964, and 1979—have been released on CD or LP, and a fourth (1965) on video. The presence of Anna Tomowa-Sintow, Edita Gruberova, and James King fails to justify the release of this performance. The 1982 Ariadne finds none of those singers in optimum voice, but it does commemorate Trudeliese Schmidt’s sterling Komponist and Wolfgang Sawallisch’s magisterial conducting. The German maestro’s recordings of Elektra, Die Frau ohne Schatten, Intermezzo, Arabella, Friedenstag, and Capriccio claim honored places in the Strauss discography. This Salzburg Ariadne joins the list. Replacing Karl Böhm on the podium for the 1981 performances, Sawallisch left his artistic imprint on an opera Böhm claimed as his personal property in Vienna, Salzburg, and New York. In this 1982 performance, Sawallisch’s command of Strauss’s music is evident from the opening measures of the Vorspiel. Guiding the Vienna Philharmonic with a firm but pliant hand, he shapes a genial, warm-toned account of the score. In the overture to the opera proper, he draws luminous playing from the ensemble as he weaves the various musical strands into a gorgeous web of sound. Finding convincing tempos, he propels the music to one superbly controlled climax after another. How odd, then, that Sawallisch never conducted another opera performance at the Salzburg Festival. Perhaps his duties as the music director for the competing festival in Munich precluded his further participation.
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