Hans Graf & Singapore Symphony Orchestra: Richard Strauss: A Hero's Life
OUR Recordings

It's easy to understand the appeal the tone poem has for a composer. Rather than staring down the intimidating blank canvas, the “tondichtung” provides a template of sorts without handicapping the composer with a creatively restricting narrative. Especially popular in Europe from the mid-nineteenth century to the first quarter of the twentieth, the tone poem typically assumes a single-movement instrumental form designed to allusively evoke moods, stories, or scenes. The proverbial poster child for the genre is German composer Richard Strauss(1864-1949) who composed no less than ten tone poems, including the two given thoroughly vibrant readings here by the Singapore Symphony Orchestra (SSO) and Hans Graf, the company's Chief Conductor and Quantedge Music Director since 2020.

Don Juan (1888) and Ein Heldenleben (1898) are warhorses of sorts, yet in the wholly engaged hands of Graf and the SSO they take on vivid new life. Both pieces possess arcs—the former essaying an epic journey that moves from romantic desperation to triumph and finally despair and the latter likewise tracing dramatic periods in a hero's life—without grounding themselves too specifically in narrative detail. Whereas Don Juan hews to the single-movement structure, Ein Heldenleben unfolds (without a break) across six suggestively titled sections, though the composer later requested that they be removed, perhaps thinking that they divulged too much to the audience.

As both works celebrate particular figures, they demand a robust presentation, which the SSO and its Austrian conductor deliver. Both bring ample experience to the venture, Graf a repeat award winner who's recorded works by Mozart, Stravinsky, and Berg and the SSO responsible for the release of over fifty recordings since its 1979 founding. Prior to the Strauss release, the two collaborated on recordings of material by Mozart, Stravinsky, and Kozlowski.

In contrast to other portrayals that present Don Juan as a lustful creature ravenous for one female conquest after another, the one by the Austrian writer Nikolaus Lenau casts him as a Spanish nobleman desperately seeking the perfect incarnation of womanhood. Ultimately failing to reach that goal, Juan succumbs to despair. Strauss, twenty-four years old when he read Lenau's treatment, crafted an orchestral work that mirrors that trajectory in opening with a rousing theme voiced by sweeping strings and following it with lyrical passages reflecting his romantic escapades and eventually gloomy tonalities that signify his demise and death (in a duel). Strauss exploits the full resources of the orchestra in a score ablaze with woodwinds, horns, and percussion and highlighted by solo spotlights for violin and oboe (a movingly tender one accorded the latter) and dramatic shifts in mood. Triumphant at one moment and nakedly romantic at another, the music fluidly unfolds in a constant outpouring of emotional expression—joy, longing, serenity, and despair but three of the many tonalities explored. The passion with which the SSO delivers the work is wholly sympathetic to its spirit.

A decade later, Ein Heldenleben appeared, a quasi-autobiographical tone poem inspired by Beethoven's Eroica symphony and reflecting Strauss's own life and career. In keeping with a triumphant opening section called “Der Held” (The Hero), the music's bold, brash, and brassy (Strauss had earlier written that a score featuring “lots of horns … is always a measure of heroism”)—though some critics were appalled by the seeming egotism on display. Building from the lower strings, the music quickly grows majestic, with the chromaticism of the horns-punctuated material identifying it clearly as Strauss's handiwork. After that dynamic intro comes the “Des Helden Widersacher” (The Hero's Adversaries), rich in mischievous woodwinds whose heckling could be interpreted as the annoying chatter of those same music critics (not surprisingly, they're summarily drowned out by other sections of the orchestra). Things take a decidedly romantic turn in “Des Helden Gefährtin” (The Hero's Companion), which Strauss composed with his wife in mind and features poignant passages for solo violin. At thirteen minutes and replete with mini-cadenzas, it's also the longest section and thus affords the violinist ample opportunity to stretch out. After the blissful summit of its Mahlerian splendour is reached, the “tondichtung” turns its attention to “Des Helden Walstatt” (The Hero at Battle), the music now growing war-like and martial snares, cymbals, and horns blazing with grotesque, Shostakovich-ian fury. During the elegiac penultimate section, Strauss incorporates quotes from his own compositions into “Des Helden Friedenswerke” (The Hero's Works of Peace) before concluding the forty-seven-minute odyssey with the serene “Des Helden Weltflucht und Vollendung” (The Hero's Retirement from the World and Completion). While Strauss's own adieu to composing was still decades away, he here represents the hero as having dispatched his enemies and ending his earthly tenure at peace with his life and accomplishments.

January 2026