Strauss: Also Sprach Zarathustra

National Review, Feb 11, 1991 by Ralph de Toledano

* Also Sprach Zarathustra, Richard Strauss's tone poem to Nietzsche's clanking "philosophical" work, is a rousing piece of music, and one more example of Strauss's inquiries into polyharmony, polyrhythm, and polytonality-as well as his Germanic Expressionismus. If there is a Nietzschean "program" I fail to find it.

The tone poem is good bravura music, with much brass and kettledrum-perfect to wake up an audience too full of martinis and dinner. This is not said pejoratively, for there are lovely passages in which Strauss does not wear his Teutonic spurs. And let us be grateful to this Richard for rescuing the opera from the Wagnerian Richard's hands. Though for a time a disciple, Strauss in his own operas put an end to Wagner's practice of forcing beefy tenors and sopranos to milk their fingers or tell their beads for ten minutes while the orchestra "explains" what they have just sung. This is no problem in the Zarathustra, which does not succumb to musical elephantiasis. Its juices are stirringly extracted from the score by Vladimir Ashkenazy and the Cleveland Orchestra (London 425 608-2).