Strauss - Ein Heldenleben
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra / Jansons
RCO Live RCO04103

Release date January 2005

For his inaugural concert as chief conductor of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Mariss Jansons has chosen a work with strong Amsterdam connections. Strauss dedicated Ein Heldenleben to the Concertgebouw's then music director, Willem Mengelberg, who became famed for his interpretation of it. Almost half a century later (and still in post), Mengelberg made a striking, if somewhat eccentric, recording of Heldenleben. Although Strauss was not central to the concerns of its recently departed music director Riccardo Chailly, it remains core repertoire for the great Dutch orchestra. Heldenleben has long been a Jansons speciality, although he has never previously recorded it. He steers a middle course between Fritz Reiner's fierce classicism and Christian Thielemann's recent naughty-but-nice Sachertorte of a performance, which stretches the final section further than the composer surely envisaged. The Royal Concertgebouw's response is fabulous, swaggering and glamorous - they are clearly in the early stages of a glowing honeymoon period with their new chief conductor. RCO Live has issued the performance on SACD and also on DVD. The latter includes a documentary made for Dutch TV earlier this year entitled The Sixth Maestro. The title refers to the remarkable fact that, in part due to Mengelberg's exceptionally long stint with the orchestra, the Royal Concertgebouw has only had five music directors in its long history. The documentary profiles Jansons, showing him in rehearsal with both the Royal Concertgebouw (in Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra) and the Vienna Philharmonic (in Schoenberg's Gurrelieder). Fascinatingly, it also compares the approaches of Mengelberg, van Beinum, Haitink and Chailly in the tricky opening bars of Mahler's Fourth Symphony, and reveals strong partisanship on the part of past and present players. There are still deep feelings of love for Eduard van Beinum, who was a father-figure to the orchestra and who died (long before his time) during a rehearsal in the Concertgebouw. At 61, the genial and approachable Jansons could become a second van Beinum. The first fruits of the relationship could hardly be more promising.

Sandy Matheson