Opera excerpts from Pfitzner (Palestrina; Das Herz; Das Kathchen von Heilbronn) & R. Strauss (Guntram; Capriccio; Feuersnot)
Near the end of his life, the great German conductor Eugen Jochum saw off a visitor to his Munich home with the rather unexpected admonition, "Don't forget Pfitzner and Reger!" Well, Reger has had it pretty good on recordings since then, while Pfitzner has been ignored, if not forgotten, until recently. Enter Christian Thielemann, a conductor who has clearly mastered the grand manner and who possesses an undeniable affinity with the music. Leading the orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, whose music director he became in 1997, he makes a welcome contribution to the Pfitzner discography in this, his debut recording for DG. Thielemann's accounts of the preludes to Acts I, II, and III ofPalestrina, and of orchestral excerpts from other operas by Pfitzner and Strauss, are full of conviction and refreshingly old-fashioned in their lyric intensity and sweep. Especially lovely: the playing Thielemann elicits in Strauss's unabashedly Parsifalian prelude to Guntram, a work that failed at its premiere, but of which the composer was so fond he quoted some of its music inEin Heldenleben.--Ted Libbey