Ein Heldenleben / Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme Suite

Recording of the Month (Gramophone May 2006)

"Simon Rattle has never wanted for artistic courage, but this is a watershed recording…Rattle digs deep to deliver a reading of breathtaking power. His orchestra's (and they are, now, undeniably his) refulgent tone is almost as sumptuous as in the old days. But whereas Karajan could occasionally coast on that orchestral tidal wave, Rattle never loses dramatic focus."
(Gramophone)

A live recording of Sir Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic performing Richard Strauss's monumental tone poem, Ein Heldenleben, will be released by EMI in March 2006, coupled with a studio recording of the same composer's nine-movement suite Le bourgeois Gentilhomme. The disc was previously released in Asia to coincide with a November 2005 BPO/Rattle concert tour to China, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea that included performances of Ein Heldenleben. The disc marks Sir Simon's ninth release on EMI Classics with the Berlin orchestra of which he has been Chief Conductor and Artistic Director since September 2002, and their first recorded collaboration in a work by Richard Strauss.

Strauss composed his Ein Heldenleben (A Hero's Life) in 1897-1898 alongside another tone poem, Don Quixote, which was completed first. In a letter written whilst on holiday in July 1898, the thirty-four-year-old Strauss mentions Ein Heldenleben: "Since Beethoven's Eroica is so unpopular with our conductors and hence rarely performed, I am filling a desperate need by composing a tone poem of substantial length … which has no funeral march to be sure, but is yet in E-flat major with lots of horn sound, since horns are, after all, the thing for heroism." Scored for large orchestra, the work is divided into six titled sections that are performed in one continuous movement. Strauss published no programme for Ein Heldenleben yet he later acknowledged suggestions of the content by various commentators. The characters include the Hero (the composer), his capricious wife, and his adversaries, who are the pompous and nagging critics. At the conclusion of the work, having done battle with his adversaries, the Hero settles down to a life of contented pastoral retirement. Strauss managed to weave nearly thirty quotations from his own operas, songs and tone poems into Ein Heldenleben. He conducted the premiere in Frankfurt in 1899.

Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, Op. 60, started life in 1912 as incidental music to an adaptation by Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal of Molière's comedy about the boorish but kindhearted simpleton, Monsieur Jourdain, and his farcical attempts to climb the social ladder. It was intended to be performed immediately before Hoffmansthal/Strauss's opera Ariadne auf Naxos but the juxtaposition failed artistically and Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme was withdrawn. After a second attempt to resurrect the music in 1917 was also unsuccessful, Strauss rescued it as a nine-movement suite scored for thirty-seven players. The work recreates the style and mood of the 17th century in a 20th-century manner; Strauss quotes liberally from Lully (a tune Lully used in the original 1670 production of the play), Wagner (The Ring) and even himself (Don Quixote and Der Rosenkavalier).

This latest release by Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic follows highly acclaimed recordings of Schubert's Symphony No. 9, Mahler's Symphony No. 5, Debussy's La Mer, Dvorák Tone Poems, Orff's Carmina Burana and Messiaen's Éclairs sur l'au-delà…

Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic perform Ein Heldenleben at Carnegie Hall in January 2006. Besides New York, their touring plans for the rest of 2006 include halls and festivals in the Netherlands, Germany, France, Austria and the U.K., where they will perform repertoire by, among others, Bach, Mozart, Haydn, Brahms, Wagner, Mahler, Debussy, Ravel, Schoenberg, Holst and Adès.

"With his orchestra's sumptuous sound and playing [of Ein Heldenleben], Rattle takes a rich but restrained view of the proceedings, letting the supreme young instrumentalists of the Berlin Philharmonic speak for themselves. … The battle sequence is hair-raising in its studied intensity, the soundstage is huge and the dynamic range awesome. The nine movements [of Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme] run the gamut from simulated Couperin and Lully to Strauss miniatures; there is a death-defying solo for the violin that recalls Zarathustra and a sublime cello solo that recalls Don Quixote. … The instrumental detail is fabulous … the timbres are captured with exquisite beauty."
(Audiophile Audition reviewing the Japan release of the CD)