Sometimes comments are voiced to the effect that you’d never know Jane Austen had been writing in the middle of the Napoleonic Wars, since there isn’t a single reference anywhere in her oeuvre to wartime activity. Was writing her complete refuge, in the same way that Richard Strauss was able to detach himself mentally and psychologically from the horrors of Nazi Germany in 1942 and retreat to pre-revolutionary France for his final opera? Capriccio is a quite extraordinary piece. Its libretto is based on an original concept by Stefan Zweig, later developed by Clemens Krauss, to whom the work is dedicated. It calls itself “Ein Konversationsstück”, a conversation piece about an opera within an opera. As so often with Strauss, there is a beautiful and aristocratic young woman, widowed, plagued by loneliness and self-doubt, and now torn between two suitors who each represent one part of the artistic dilemma. Countess Madeleine’s inability to choose between the fiery poet Olivier and the tender composer Flamand means that in turn she cannot decide for words or for music – which is the more important of the two? The quality of the libretto, which is often witty but also given to philosophical musings of great depth, extends right up to the closing scene where she sings of her suitors’ love, itself tenderly woven from verses and sounds, buffeting her soul, and questions whether she needs to tear this fabric apart, though she is already entwined in it. A short time later she encapsulates the paradox present in all choice-making: “Verliert man nicht immer, wenn man gewinnt?” (Don’t you always lose when you win?). The Moonlight Interlude and the ensuing Closing Scene from the opera formed the opening item in this concert given by the Hamburg State Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Bertrand de Billy, together with Maria Bengtsson, both with many years of solid operatic experience under their belts.
Bengtsson stands in the great tradition of Swedish sopranos, lighter and more lyrical than some and less darkly dramatic than others, but she has that creaminess of tone and absolute security in all her registers, together with excellent diction, all of which makes her an ideal voice for so many Strauss roles. At the start of the orchestral introduction to the Moonlight Music I could have done with softer dynamics, not least from the rather prominent horns, better to highlight the shimmering effects in the strings. However, after Bengtsson’s first entry de Billy took care never to cover the voice, and she soared majestically in the reference to Flamand’s grand soul with the beautiful eyes, “die grosse Seele mit den schönen Augen”. Positioned on a plinth behind the back tiers of the orchestra, her black-and-sea-green gown emphasising her regal bearing, she reached out to her audience with body language that underlined her experience of staged production, opening out with full throttle for her cry of “O, Madeleine! Madeleine!”. In the following line she summoned up all the anguish inherent in the choice facing her, when she queries whether she really does want to be caught between two fires and be burned alive.
After examining herself in a mirror as the music slowly winds down, she pursues the idea whether it is possible to find an ending for the opera that Olivier and Flamand have been busily writing which is not trivial. It is the kind of caprice Strauss often felt himself drawn to, as when at an earlier stage her own brother comments: “Eine Oper ist ein absurdes Ding”. To which most observers might then reply that if it is done well, when all the stars are properly aligned, it can indeed be a marvel of the solar system and not at all an absurdity.
Just six years after the premiere of Capriccio, Strauss embarked on writing what were to be his very last songs, not intended initially to be a stand-alone song cycle, but assembled after the composer’s death in 1949 by his friend and publisher, Ernst Roth, who later established the usual order in which they are sung and provided the title, Vier letzte Lieder, which has stuck. Stuck that is, despite the writing of a fifth song, Malven, at the end of 1948 for yet another of Strauss’s choice sopranos, the Moravian Maria Jeritza, who secreted it away until after her death in 1982. This song cycle represents the last hurrah to German Romanticism, the music shot through with sensuousness as well as aching nostalgia.
Does it ever matter if on stage we are confronted with a thirty-year-old King Lear or a seventy-year-old Hamlet? Being fully inside the role is what counts, and of late I have heard a good many young sopranos attempting this quartet of songs who should have been advised to hold back before scaling this Everest. You don’t need to see the Grim Reaper already appearing on the horizon in Im Abendrot but you do need to convey the kind of contemplative serenity which Bengtsson displayed in abundance. The intensity she invested into the first line of the final stanza of von Eichendorff’s poem, “O weiter stiller Friede!”, was quite remarkable, coming seemingly from her innermost soul.
This final song requires deep artistic maturity, complemented as in this performance by de Billy’s sympathetic accompaniment, evident for instance in the minor key shudder of the strings at the word “wandermüde”. By contrast, the first of the cycle, Frühling, is the most technically taxing because of its wide tessitura. Here, Bengtsson had all the freshness that we expect of spring, the voice capturing the full radiance of being flushed with light in “Von Licht übergossen, wie ein Wunder vor mir”. She found the right note of ecstasy too in Beim Schlafengehen at the point where the soul floats free in the enchanted circle of the night. Throughout, de Billy maintained a firm hand on the tiller, yet was always sensitive to those moments when the music requires soft underpinning from the strings matched by graduated dynamics.
Shortly before the close of the 19th century, Strauss composed one of his most popular tone poems, Ein Heldenleben. The genre originated with Liszt in 1848 and fused instrumental music with explicit storytelling: in this case it was all about Richard and his wife Pauline. This autobiographical focus, picked up again later in Symphonia Domestica, quickly led to the charge that the bombastic music exactly reflected the composer’s overbearing nature, not helped by Strauss’s casual, but deliberately ironic, reference to the fact that he found himself every bit as interesting as Caesar or Napoleon. This is unfair, not only because his music regularly draws on elements of humour (as we saw at the start of this concert in Capriccio) but because Strauss was often quite self-deprecating. He mocked the supposed unpopularity of Beethoven’s Eroica by surmising that his “A Hero’s Life” could easily fill the void in concert programming: “While it has no funeral march, it does have lots of horns, horns being quite the thing to express heroism.”
There were indeed the obligatory eight horns for this performance of Ein Heldenleben. The opening was less muscular than some, the textures leaner, yet leaping forward with youthful élan. I was conscious more of French elegance and an urbane mode of progression rather than a conscious display of orchestral virtuosity. At 44 minutes in duration, it was mercifully less than some overblown versions I have heard, yet always alive to the changing moods that this piece requires, not least the passionate playfulness that emerged in the eloquent solos of the orchestra’s leader, Konradin Seitzer. If the upper strings as a whole occasionally lacked heft and the lower strings more saturated tone in the postlude with its thematic exploration of renunciation, there were some fine instrumental solos from wind and brass.
Not everybody cares passionately about the music of Strauss. Hans Werner Henze for one bemoaned its apparent lack of a moral compass. Yet in his fifteen operas, ten tone poems and more than 200 songs (not to mention his concertos and chamber works) Strauss always remained true to himself. In the year of his death and in one of his final pronouncements, he averred that there is nothing new under the sun. Rather, it is the appearance of new artistic voices that alone creates something novel. The opulence of his writing was an inspiration to many of his contemporaries; the range and breadth of what he had to say as a composer and as a human being will live on.
Alexander Hall
Richard Strauss
Moonlight Interlude (Mondscheinmusik) and Closing Scene from Capriccio; Four Last Songs (Vier letzte Lieder); Ein Heldenleben (A Hero’s Life)
Maria Bengtsson (soprano) – Hamburg State Philharmonic Orchestra, Conductor Bertrand de Billy
Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Grosser Saal, 1 June 2025
All photos © Claudia Höhne