Owen Mortimer enjoys the finest recordings of a late masterpiece that shows the ageing German composer at his most melodious, affable best
Richard Strauss
The work
The sound of the horn is integral to the music of Richard Strauss. He more-or-less began his composing career with the First Horn Concerto, written for his father Franz in 1883, and signed off with the heartrending horn solo in ‘Going to Sleep’ (Four Last Songs), completed over six decades later. Along the way, the horn is a constant presence in Strauss’s orchestrations, from his early tone poems Don Juan, Till Eulenspiegel and Ein Heldenleben to his late operas Daphne and Capriccio.
This devotion to the horn is matched by a deep understanding of the instrument’s character, qualities and technical Stylistically, these works mark a return to Strauss’s classical roots seen through the lens of his long career as a master of late Romanticism. The charm of the Second Horn Concerto is that it harks back to his youth, but with all the wisdom of an old man living through unprecedented changes in the world.
The Second World War was a time of great turmoil for Strauss, both artistically and personally. Eager to advance the cause of German culture while protecting his family, he temporarily aligned himself with the Third Reich – only to end up getting badly burned. A stint as challenges. Strauss’s horn-playing father exerted enormous influence over the composer’s early musical development and the lessons he learned stayed with him throughout his life. This included a love of Mozart that led him to comment, ‘The most perfect melodic shapes are found in Mozart; he has the lightness of touch, which is the true objective.’
The Second Horn Concerto dates from 1942 and marks the beginning of Strauss’s ‘Indian summer’, a period that also saw the creation of his Oboe Concerto and Metamorphosen for 23 solo strings. All three are substantial instrumental scores that followed in the wake of Capriccio, yet Strauss modestly dismissed them as mere ‘exercises for my wrists’ with ‘no significance whatsoever from the standpoint of musical history’. president of the Reich’s Culture Chamber ended abruptly due to Strauss’s ongoing association with his Jewish librettist Stefan Zweig, and from 1941 the composer’s Jewish daughter-in-law and grandchildren lived under constant threat of deportation.
Despite this, the Second Horn Concerto is a joyous, playful work that embodies the Mozartian ‘lightness of touch’ Strauss so admired. Only occasional passing clouds d
