Word: heldenleben
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Most pompously egotistical work in all symphonic music is Richard Strauss's Ein Heldenleben (A Hero's Life). It not only brassily depicts its hero besting his detractors, but, by quoting snatches from Don Juan, Don Quixote, Death and Transfiguration, etc., announces that the hero is Herr Strauss himself. On sale last fortnight in Manhattan shops was a new recording of Ein Heldenleben, by Artur Rodzinski and the Cleveland Orchestra (Columbia: 10 sides; $5.50). It was well recorded but not the best ever (most sweeping performance is Victor's 1928 version, by Willem Mengelberg). What made news...
...Heldenleben is Hitler's favorite work. [It] depicts the life of a Hero grievously misunderstood by his fellow men and his fellow enemies. The Hero is essentially a peace maker but, thanks to the intrigues of the petty objectors . . . he is driven to war. He confounds his enemies on the battle field, and is then free to build a new order in which peace is the only supreme law, after every conscious and unconscious foe has been crushed into the dust...
...Quixote has always been the black sheep among the Richard Strauss tone poems. It has consistently been denied the great popularity of the earlier works, even of later works like Ein Heldenleben. Probably the reason is its extreme digressiveness: it rambles along, absolutely unfettered by considerations of structure, and the resulting lack of logic makes irritating, and even bewildering listening for many. Yet in many ways it is Strauss's greatest work. It shows a variety and a breadth of spirit unequalled in anything else he wrote. The humor in Till Eulenspiegel, for example, is obvious stuff compared...
...work, which on the whole triumphs over the occasional patchiness of his performance. Feurmann's cello playing is, as always, superlative, and blends admirably with the smooth viola-solo of Samuel Lifschey. The cello solo is one reason why Don Quixote appeals to me more than Ein Heldenleben, in which work the lengthy passages of ultra-sweet, upper-register fiddling get on my nerves so much as to lessen my enjoyment of the work...
Richard Strauss: Ein Heldenleben (Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy conducting; Victor: 10 sides). Up-to-date recording technique makes Composer Strauss's autobiographical "Life of a Hero" scintillate. But Conductor Ormandy's interpretation has not quite the sweep of the performance recorded in 1928 by irascible Willem Mengelberg, to whom the autobiography was dedicated...