You can't beat Richard Strauss. Done properly, he's the most headily exciting of composers, extravagant and humane, emotive and emotional. Listening to Charles Mackerras conduct a programme of his works, I was forcefully reminded of his ability to startle, dazzle and amaze, even when the music itself is so familiar.
It's inevitable that, in 2001, performances of Also Sprach Zarathustra should proliferate. Ever since Stanley Kubrick used it in 2001: A Space Odyssey, Strauss's Nietzschean parable has become the most popular of his orchestral works, so much so that we don't always probe beneath its surface. Strauss claimed that Nietzsche represented the most important influence on his intellectual life, though Zarathustra itself reflects a deep-seated ambiguity.
Man's striving to transcend the limitations of self, science and religion is pitted against the eternal flux of nature - yet when Strauss finally contemplates the emergence of Nietzsche's infamous Superman, he dithers and draws back, giving nature, rather than man, the last word. The score inhabits a tonal war zone, in which two keys battle for supremacy without ever finding resolution. Mackerras flings himself into the work with electrifying violence, revelling in its lurid harmonies and ensuring that every tonal shift hits you like a slap. Other orchestras play it with more refinement than the BBC Symphony Orchestra, but I've rarely heard a performance so gripping.
Much the same can be said for the operatic extracts that formed the rest of the programme. The Symphonic Fantasia from Die Frau ohne Schatten has come in for stick over the years, largely because Strauss draws extensively on the opera's final scene, often considered the weakest part of the score. Yet here, the Fantasia was so perfectly paced that that infamous ending seemed not a second too long. Mackerras also gives us a generous selection from Rosenkavalier, flawlessly conducted and wonderfully sung.
Yvonne Kenny's supremely aristocratic Marschallin gives up Randi Stene's tetchily adolescent Octavian with warmth as well as regret, aware that life isn't over even though love may temporarily be lost. Rebecca Evans's Sophie is a stroppy, attention-seeking airhead. You're left wondering just how long her relationship with Octavian is actually going to last. Matchless stuff that left me longing to hear the same performers in the opera in its entirety.
