Berg • R Strauss Berg: Lyric Suite – three pieces; R Strauss: Der Rosenkavalier – Suite Cleveland Orchestra/Franz Welser-Möst Cleveland Orchestra TCO-0007 56:15 mins
Rosenkavalier suites are moveable feasts. Richard Strauss didn’t compile one himself, though he may have sanctioned the most commonly-heard version, which was put together in the mid-1940s by the New York Philharmonic’s conductor at the time, Artur Rodzińsky. Franz Welser-Möst is more generous with his selection: his suite, largely based on one made by the late conductor Robert Mandell, contains extracts from all three of the opera’s acts, including the love-making introduction to Act I, with its orgasmically whooping horns, and the complete prelude and pantomime from the start of Act III. It’s all glittering virtuoso stuff, and it suits the Cleveland players down to the ground.
Berg’s own arrangement for orchestral strings of three movements from his Lyric Suite forms a characteristically symmetrical unit, with a palindromic Allegro misterioso at its centre. Webern actually advised Berg against including that scurrying piece, which is hard enough to play in its original version for string quartet, let alone by a string orchestra; but its ecstatic middle section is musically bound up with the following movement, and so the transcriptions form a satisfying whole. Again, Welser-Möst benefits from outstanding playing from his Cleveland Orchestra, and the recording is first-class.
Misha Donat
