Richard Strauss

Rooted in Romanticism, which he transcended through his orchestral options in his best-known works, the symphonic poems Till the Mischievous and Thus Spoke Zarathustra, composer and conductor Richard Strauss moved towards Viennese modernism with his operas Salome, Elektra and The Knight of the Rose, leaving four poignant last lieder as his testament. Unrelated to the Strauss dynasty of Viennese waltzes, Richard Georg Strauss was born in Munich on June 11, 1864, and received a complete musical education from his father Franz Strauss, horn player with the Royal Orchestra and teacher at the city's Academy. Trained on the piano from the age of four, he composed his first score two years later and began violin lessons in 1872 with Benno Walter, before studying composition for five years with Friedrich Wilhelm Meyer. Although he had the makings of a musical prodigy, he was late in discovering the works of Wagner and Liszt due to the conservative ideas of his father, who had his symphonic compositions performed by local orchestras. However, the young Strauss caught up and became a fervent admirer of Wagner, attending performances of several operas. In 1882, he completed his Violin Concerto Op. 8, then studied philosophy and art history at university. The following year, he became assistant to conductor Hans von Bülow at the Meiningen Court Orchestra, succeeding him for a season and letting Brahms conduct the premiere of his Symphony No. 4 at the end of 1885. In addition to meeting Mahler in Leipzig in 1887, and his future wife, the soprano Pauline de Ahna, Strauss befriended the orchestra's first violinist, Alexandre Ritter, who encouraged him to follow a new path towards program music, resulting in the symphonic poems Don Juan (1889) and Death and Transfiguration (1890). In 1889, after an assignment at the Bayreuth Festival, where he met Cosima Wagner, the composer was appointed Court Kapellmeister to Grand Duke Charles-Alexander of Saxony-Weimar-Eisenach. The following year, at the Eisenach Festival, he conducted an early work, Burleske, for piano and orchestra, played by Liszt pupil Eugen Albert, then in Weimar his new symphonic poem Macbeth. The lead role in his first opera, Guntram, premiered on May 10, 1894, was tailor-made for his fiancée, who became his wife on September 10. He left his post in Weimar to return to the Munich Opera, this time as principal conductor, while also leading the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra for a season. His most famous symphonic poems, Till l'Espiègle (1895) and Ainsi parlait Zarathoustra, after Nietzsche (1896), were premiered within a year of each other, followed by Don Quichotte and the autobiographical A Hero's Life in 1898. That same year, Strauss was hired as principal conductor of the Berlin Staatskapelle, where he remained for fifteen years. After the failure of his second opera Feuersnot (1901), he finally gained recognition in this field with Salome (Dresden, December 9, 1905), based on Oscar Wilde's play, which caused a scandal. Whether as conductor or composer, his reputation was now international. During an American tour in 1904, he conducted his Sinfonia domestica at New York's Carnegie Hall, a hybrid work between symphonic poem and symphony, as was to become the Alpine Symphony (1915). In 1906, he made a decisive encounter with writer, poet and playwright Hugo von Hofmannsthal, whose play Elektra, adapted from Sophocles, he wished to set to music, premiered in Dresden on January 25, 1909. The collaboration, in line with Viennese modernism, continued with five other projects: Le Chevalier à la rose (first performed in Dresden on January 26, 1911), Ariane à Naxos (Stuttgart, October 25, 1912), La Femme sans ombre (Vienna, October 10, 1919), Hélène d'Égypte (Dresden, June 6, 1928) and Arabella (Dresden, July 1, 1933). Asked to sign a manifesto at the outbreak of the First World War, Strauss refused to take a stand and devoted himself to his art, far from the turmoil at his residence in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, where he lived with his wife and their son Franz. From 1919 to 1924, he was Principal Conductor at the Vienna State Opera. In 1920, he and Hofmannsthal were part of the team that launched the Salzburg Festival, but nine years later the librettist's death put an end to an association that had breathed new life into opera. In 1924, he composed and wrote the libretto for the autobiographical opera Intermezzo, a comedy whose lead role was created by Lotte Lehmann in Dresden on November 4. When Hitler came to power in 1933, the position of President of the Reich Chamber of Music was created for him, without consulting him. As an apolitical man, Strauss accepted and, at the same time, replaced Arturo Toscanini and Bruno Walter, one at the Bayreuth Festival and the other at a Berlin Philharmonic concert. He works with Stefan Zweig on the opera La Femme silencieuse (1935), banned after three performances. The composer, who had just completed the anthem for the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, was dismissed. For his next three operas, Friedenstag and Daphne (1938), then Danae's Love (completed in 1940, cancelled in 1944 by Goebbels and premiered in 1952), he turned to another librettist, Joseph Gregor. Last but not least, Capriccio (1942) was written in collaboration with conductor Clemens Krauss. In the years leading up to the Second World War, Strauss had sought to protect his son's Jewish in-laws. Although he managed to save his daughter-in-law Alice and their children, he was unable to prevent the extermination of several family members in concentration camps. In the post-war period, which has been called his "Indian summer", he composed Horn Concerto No. 2 and Oboe Concerto, followed by two last major works, Métamorphoses (1946), a study for twenty-three solo strings, and Quatre derniers lieder, for soprano and orchestra, premiered in London on May 22, 1950 by Kirsten Flagstad and Wilhelm Furtwängler, eight months after the composer's death. Still on stage to celebrate his 85th birthday, organized by Georg Solti, Richard Strauss died of kidney failure on September 8, 1949.