Amazon rating: 5 stars. A brilliant recording of Richard Strauss’ popular tone poems in superb sound.


STRAUSS Don Juan. Ein Heldenleben  Hans Graf, cond; Singapore SO  OUR 8.226934 (63:35)

Long gone are the days when top-tier recordings belonged exclusively to a handful of “major” orchestras from Europe and North America. Lesser-known regional orchestras in Europe, South America, and Asia have been consistently improving their quality over the past decades, and many of them have received prestigious awards, critical recognition, and recording contracts from major labels. This is the case with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, which was founded in 1979 and quickly became one of the top orchestras in Asia. It was nominated for the Gramophone magazine’s Orchestra of the Year Award in 2021 and has recorded over 50 albums on prominent labels such as BIS, Pentatone, Naxos, Chandos, Marco Polo, and others.
On the album at hand, the orchestra is led by its current music director Hans Graf. Graf, who is now 77 years young, built his early career largely on recordings of Mozart’s music with the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg, which he led from 1984 to 1994. It looks like he developed an interest in music by Richard Strauss only recently, after he took over the Singapore Symphony Orchestra in 2020. A quick glance at the SSO’s concert calendar reveals that they have programmed Strauss’ works quite often. In addition to Don Juan and Ein Heldenleben, they have performed Till Eulenspiegel, Don Quixote, and An Alpine Symphony over the past several seasons.
Don Juan, composed by a 24-year-old Strauss in 1888, and Ein Heldenleben, created ten years later, are among the composer’s most popular works. Both belong to the so-called “heroic” tone poems, depicting a hero’s journey—a failed quest to find true love in the case of Don Juan and the composer’s own life in the autobiographical Ein Heldenleben (A Hero’s Life). They are staples of the orchestral repertoire and should be very familiar to all Fanfare readers.
The album enters a very crowded field—there are literally hundreds of recordings of both tone poems available, from classic accounts by Rudolf Kempe, Fritz Reiner, and the composer himself to more recent recordings by Christian Thielemann, Andris Nelsons, and Vasily Petrenko. It is a fruitless task to provide even a brief survey of all available versions, but I am happy to report that the current album firmly belongs to the top tier. Graf demonstrates a keen ability to pay close attention to details while not losing sight of the overall narrative, and the orchestra plays splendidly. The woodwind solos are a delight throughout the recording—tender and soft in love scenes, appropriately grotesque when depicting the hero’s enemies. The brass section is tight and powerful, and the strings are precise and polished. I am not going to claim that the Singaporean strings have the weight and presence of the Berlin Philharmoinic or the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, but they never feel underpowered and do their job admirably well.
The SSO also benefits from external reinforcements, being joined by two veteran guest concertmasters—Markus Tomasi from Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg for Don Juan and David Coucheron from the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra for Ein Heldenleben. One quality that stands out for me is that these performances sound fresh. The venerable European ensembles, such as the Vienna Philharmonic or the Dresden Staatskapelle, may have Strauss’s music in their blood and can play it in their sleep, but overfamiliarity can be detrimental at times. The Singapore Symphony does not have such a longstanding tradition, so their interpretations convey a sense of discovery that sometimes goes missing in performances by more established orchestras.
This is the third CD from the OUR Recordings label that I have received for review, and one thing that consistently stands out is the superb sound quality. The recorded sound on this album is detailed and well balanced, crystal clear in quiet passages and powerful yet never congested at the climaxes. I am looking forward to more Richard Strauss recordings from Singapore. Warmly recommended. Anton Angelo

Amazon rating: 5 stars. A brilliant recording of Richard Strauss’ popular tone poems in superb