Thread: Strauss' Horn Music

I love the recording of the 1st Strauss Horn Concerto by Dennis Brain (soloist).

I believe the Nazi's record with the arts was rather mixed. Certainly Hitler admired Richard Strauss (nothing wrong with that) and supposedly his favorite singer was Elizabeth Schwarzkopf (again I cannot disagree). The Nazi's were also known to have played Furtwangler off Karajan. They also had the great filmmaker, Leni Riefenstahl in their employment. On the other side... perhaps because of Hitler having been twice rejected from art school... the Nazi's were adamantly anti-Modernist in the visual arts and as a result the visual arts were set back in germany to such an extent that they are only now recovering from. This is all the more unfortunate when one considers that the visual arts in pre-war Germany were undergoing a flowering not seen since the time of Durer, Holbein and the Renaissance. German artists... and artists actively working in Germany such as E.L. Kirchner, Kokoschka, Paul Klee, Kandinsky, Max Beckmann, Max Ernst, etc... were all publically denounced as "degenerate artists" and many fled the country. Much the same happened in the filed of literature where during the pre-war era active writers included Strauss' librettist, Hugo von Hoffmannsthal, Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse, Rilke, etc... I would never see the Nazi's as greatly supportive of art... but at the same time I think it is misleading to imagine that there is some sort of link between morality and quality in art. Many of the great Renaissnce princes supported the work of the finest painters, architects, poets, etc... of their day... and yet in many ways a great number of them only differed from the Nazi's in terms of the scale of their attrocities.

By the way... I'm a huge Strauss fan here, myself. I especially love his operas, including the marvelous Karjan recording of Die Rosenkavalier with the above-mentioned Schwarzkopf, and Salome which I will be seeing in person this coming April. I don'y have Strauss' horn concertos as of yet... but knowing Brain's recordings of Mozart's horn concertos, I am somewhat certain they are indeed marvelously performed.

The nazis used and twisted music for the purposes of their evil propaganda. There is nothing good about that.

Certainly... but nothing new about that. During the cold war American embassies around the world displayed paintings by the great New York School painters. The display of works by Abstract Expressionism... who the politicians and diplomats most probably did not like nor understand... was undertaken merely as a means of suggesting the great freedom in the US as opposed to what was possible in the Soviet Union (where Social Realism reigned supreme).

Richard Strauss is someone thad I have yet to hear something "bad" work after him. I really want to litsen to all his music if I could access it all. Also Sprach Zarathura is the best program music composed and likely the amongst the best 19th century works.