To introduce this clip found on Twitter: I loathe Strauss.The guy could put notes on paper, but those notes make the sound of a bourgeois toady selling himself through empty titillation. That Wagner is held to account for Nazism, but the Nazi-friendly Strauss is still celebrated, especially in the opera house, is one of the great crimes in classical music.
Now Strauss has found his perfect listener, a worthless, flaccid authoritarian whose grandiose and empty taste fits Strauss to a T. They deserve each other, and they both deserve this amazing performance.
Categories: Music
gtra1n
I'm a composer and musician, and I write about music—I do that here, for the New York Classical Review, at the Brooklyn Rail (I edit the music section there) and any place else that will have me, like New Music Box and Music & Literature. I also wrote the Miles Davis' Bitches Brew book in the 33 1/3 series.
I have to say, that’s not entirely fair to Herr Strauss. I know what you mean about his “putting notes to paper,” and rather indiscriminately at that. But his earlier works, written before he carved out a niche for himself — I’m thinking specifically of “Don Juan” and the “Burleske” for piano and orchestra — don’t deserve such dismissal. (“Don Juan,” I think, would stand as a great score no matter _who_ wrote it.) Just my $.02, or perhaps $.002.
It’s totally a matter of taste and he had exquisite craft, but I can’t stand what he has to say, that’s just me