Customer Reviews

Strauss: Josephs Legende [Legend of Joseph]

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Bought this CD on a whim. After all, I've never walked around with snippits of "Josephs Legende" in my head. After listening to this recording, I was left to wonder why. It is vintage Strauss, pacing through turns lyrical and dramatic, and brimming with orchestral color. The late/great Sinopoli was in full command here, and what an army the Staatskapelle Dresden continues to be!

Strauss is not to everyone's tastes. However, if you have a soft-spot in your heart for Heldenleben, Don Quixote, Alpensinfonie or the sentimental strains of Zarathustra, you will find much to explore and enjoy in this outstanding recording. Highly recommended

Richard Strauss's "Josephs Legende" may be the most neglected of his major works, and that's truly a shame, since it is replete with elegant melodies and harmonies from the opening notes to a glowing, truly magnificient, conclusion. Among these include several riveting dances devoted to Joseph and his affair with Potiphar's wife which form the latter half of the ballet. Regrettably, one of the reasons why this major ballet score has remained obscure is due to its relatively dark subject matter, namely that of the Biblical prophet Joseph and the events leading to his rescue by an angel, that involve not only adultery, but also madness and suicide. The late Giuseppe Sinopoli's interpretation with the Staatskapelle Dresden is absolutely riveting, and one that should have caught fire with critics and fans alike. This was among the last, if not the last, in a series of recordings which Sinopoli and his orchestra made for Deutsche Grammophon of Richard Strauss's scores. I personally think that it's as fine as the others, made more remarkable by the fact that this was a live concert recording, and yet, the sound quality is absolutely as exquisite as any from a Deutsche Grammophon studio recording made in the late 1990s. Hopefully one day this recording will be regarded as a classic of this little known work. If you are a great admirer of the Dresden Staatskapelle, Giuseppe Sinopoli and Richard Strauss, then I can assure you that you won't be disappointed.

Josephs Legende is a work that may not be classed among the best of Richard Strauss but it is among his most interesting works. The music contains elements of Salome and something of his next opera Die Frau Ohne Schatten. It was a chore for the composer to write with a wordy and symbolic scenerio by Hoffmannsthal and Count Harry Kessler, but he managed to overcome these hurdles his objections to write a work conveying great passion.

The ballet was written for the Ballet Russe, and Nijinsky was to dance the role of Joseph and choreograph the dances. By the time the music was ready, Nijinsky had been fired by Diaghilev and replaced by Massine.

The ballet is definately something for Straussians. It is not a good introduction to Strauss's music but will be interesting to anyone who has heard Salome, Elektra and the earlier tone poems. The performance by Giuseppe Sinopoli and the Dresden Staatskapelle is marvelous and brings out the seductive magic of the music.

As much as I adore Strauss - at its best, his music will aways feature at the top of my favourites list - I have learned to my cost not to be a Strauss "completist". Hence "Guntram" was cast aside and while there is far more to delight the ear in this neglected ballet, no-one could possibly place it in the first rank of his works. Strauss was too much the professional to shirk a contractual obligation but he procrastinated, raided an earlier, discarded ballet and generally dragged his feet over this one as he felt little sympathy - modern materialist as he was, despite the yearning transcendence of his best music - with the biblical subject matter. Yet he had managed to do a fine job with "Salome"; perhaps that is why we hear frequent sub-"Salome" echoes and more than a hint of what was to come in "Die Frau Ohne Schatten". This is sub-par Strauss, containing some wonderful moments - particularly the theme allotted to Poptiphar's Wife - but generally lacking inspiration and requiring the listener to endure some longueurs. I still take it down from the shelves occasionally to here Sinopoli's masterly direction of a great orchestra - and a great, big orchestra, at that, this music requiring an orchestra as large as that needed for the "Alpine Symphony" - but it's probably one of those "justly neglected" pieces that Strauss himself was not especially proud of. After its premiere in 1914 it was revived in 1947, but hardly since, and Sinopoli and DG have done us a favour by giving it the best advocacy possible in this excellent recording of a live, concert performance. Remember, Strauss dubbed himself a "first-rate second-rate composer". At his best, he's better than that but this work conforms to the self-deprecatory category he describes. Having said all that, the climax is powerful and effective because Strauss was always a theatrical animal. The Santa Fe listener is a little harsh in entitling his review "a gem of banality", but I know what he means... even if (to paraphrase Beecham) I still derive pleasure from the sheer noise this music makes.

From the opening bars it is easy to tell that Richard Strauss's Josephs Legende is full of passion. The music is hardly lacking in drama or is boring and is characterized by some of the composers best melodies through to the shimmering conclusion. It full deserves to be better known and this recording but the late Giuseppe Sinopoli and the Dresden Staatkapelle is a marvelous performance. Highly recommended.

Let us put it this way: what is there not to like in Richard Strauss's Josephslegende? The reason for putting the question this way is of course to avoid the accusation that Strauss's 1912 ballet for Diaghilev (to a scenario by Hoffmansthal) doesn't find the composer at his absolute best. Which is probably true - the music is neither as memorable nor as fresh as the music he provided for Der Rosenkavalier a little earlier (in fact, the perceptive listener will find that Strauss borrowed from both the Rosenkavalier and earlier orchestral works for the ballet). But it is still chock full of Strauss's trademark color and drama, wonderful orchestration and brilliant motifs, as well as cleverness and wit (it is probably also better than his other ballet, Schlagobers).

So yes, the music is a little sugary at times, and at 64 minutes the dose may even be too high to take in one sitting. But no one forces you to take it in all at once, and if you don't you will certainly be taken in by Strauss's enchanting, intoxicating swirls of color, clever twists and magnificent orchestration. That the Staatskapelle Dresden is able to realize these qualities is hardly surprising (gorgeously opulent strings; splendid, powerful brass; wonderfully full and warm woodwinds); in fact, they are on top form and appear to enjoy themselves immensely. Sinopoli has given us some first-rate interpretations of several Strauss operas, and he leads the performances here with sensitivity, confidence and a lighter touch than he is sometimes associated with. The recording is excellent as well. So again, while this is perhaps not top-drawer Strauss, it is still a brilliantly engaging, enjoyable experience, and I won't hesitate to give it a hearty recommendation.

Strauss once said, "I may not be a first-rate composer, but I am a first-rate seond-rate composer." His masterpieces would ead you to believe that he was, indeed, first-rate. But he had the maddening haibt of composing pointlessly virtuosic, endlessly harmonized, almost slithery music that was worse than second-rate. Despite Sinopoli on the podium to give it the plantinum treatment, Joseph's Legend is aimless, banal, and never-ending. It doesn't come from the veyr bottom of Struass's barrel but it comes close.