Eine Alpensinfonie

NAGANO GOTEBORGS SYMFONIKER

When Kent Nagano was appointed as Principal Guest Conductor starting in the autumn of 2013, one of the ideas turned into a project: performing and recording major orchestral works of Richard Strauss in connection with the composer’s 150th anniversary in 2014. Having worked for a long time as Music Director of the Bayerische Staatsoper, Kent Nagano has unique insights into Strauss’s music and the Strauss tradition, and can draw on information from authentic sources withing the Strauss family. What is perhaps less known is that the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra also has a solid Richard Strauss tradition. The orchestra already performed “Don Juan” in its inaugural season 1905-1906; it has been played more than fifty times since then. “Eine Alpensinfonie,” the last of Strauss’s large orchestral pieces, entered the orchestra’s repertoire with Otmar Suitner in 1975, and since then ahs been one of the most popular pieces with both the orchestra and its audience. Neeme Jarvi took I to the UK and Estonia and Gustavo Dudamel conducted it five times in Sweden. For these performances and recording a new approach was taken. Conductor and orchestra wished to expess not the bombastic aspects, but the subtle emotional changes, the colors and nuances of the vast and impressive landscape and the wanderer’s instinctive reaction to it, which is also expressed in the enormous orchestral apparatus. This was made possible only by the long and searching work orchestra and conductor carried out together over the years, which made possible new shades and depths in the recreation of this magnificent piece of art.

Price: $35.98