Robin Ticciati, DSO Berlin & Louise Alder - Strauss - All Music

4.5*

There is certainly no shortage of recordings of the two big Strauss tone poems included on this release, but the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin and conductor Robin Ticciati offer good reasons to add it to one's collection or listening list. Conductor and orchestra have really jelled as a unit, and this Berlin group has an ingrained tradition of Strauss playing going back to its first conductor, Ferenc Fricsay. All of the delicate wind details are in place, and the differentiation between the rough-and-ready Don Juan, Op. 20, and the ineffable, retrospective Tod und Verklärung, Op. 24, is sharp and bracing. The latter work inspired Strauss, on his deathbed, to say that dying was just as he had composed it in Death and Transfiguration, and the big sweep of the music here lets one imagine why. The entr'acte is another attraction: the Sechs Lieder, Op. 68, are difficult and well-executed by Louise Alder. Listen to the ornate vocal line of the fifth song, Amor. Berlin's Jesus-Christus-Kirche, the venue for many of Herbert von Karajan's classic recordings, still sounds great and reveals the depths of these fine readings.