Classical reviews: Strauss and Bach

Antonio Pappano conduct’s Rome’s Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecili in two early Strauss works, while the harpsichordist Asako Ogawa plays Bach’s Partitas with refined control

The harpsichordist Asako Ogawa performs Bach’s Partitas (Eric Mouroux)

Richard Strauss: Ein Heldenleben; Burleske

Bertrand Chamayou, piano; Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, conductor Antonio Pappano

Warner Classics 0190295028459

★ ★ ★ ★☆

Some people adore Richard Strauss’s music, others can’t stand its ornate richness, its endless frills, and flounces. And as his career tends to get glossed over, it’s refreshing to find a liner note as candid as music critic David Murray’s is here. Pointing out that Strauss always bent with the political wind, and that he cultivated a deep relationship with the Nazi government, he describes him as “not entirely villainous, but certainly self-serving and opportunistic”.

Ein Heldenleben was Strauss’s answer to Beethoven’s Eroica, and its ostensible story concerns a Teutonic hero. At the risk of sounding heretical, I would suggest that the best way to listen to this work is to put all mythical claptrap out of one’s mind, and to consider it as a wildly flamboyant piece of pure sound, demanding great virtuosity on the part of those who perform it. With Antonio Pappano and the Santa Cecilia orchestra led by Roberto Gonzalez-Monjas, it certainly gets that here.

Johann Sebastian Bach: Six Partitas BWV 825-830

Asako Ogawa, harpsichord

FHR92

★ ★ ★ ★☆

Asako Ogawa is a noted soloist and continuo player, and is also a Baroque coach at the Guildhall. The people she has studied with include Laurence Cummings and Steven Devine; she, therefore, comes with the best credentials. Yet by the time I had listened to the first 30 minutes of this recording, I had taken against her.

The opening Praeludium was clean and unfussy, and the first Allemande had hints of pensive rubato, but her playing seemed to have no heart. But as the second Partita progressed, she began to loosen up, revealing rhythmic subtlety and a refined control of tone colour. And with the Ouverture to Partita No 4, I realised that Ogawa’s soundworld was a place where I was very happy to live.