Five stars: Brillant performances, spectacular sound. Heaven for lovers of Strauss’s tone poems.
R. STRAUSS Don Juan. Ein Heldenleben  Hans Graf, cond; Singapore SO OUR 8226934 (63:35)

There’s no metronome marking on the score of Don Juan. Strauss’s direction is simply Allegro molto con brio. Hans Graf and the Singapore SO on their new album exhilaratingly push the “molto” and “brio” as far as they can go, and the first few bars of their performance tell us everything we need to know. This is stylish, incisive, thrilling playing—a young man’s composition here fizzing with character and panache. Graf knows that narrative is everything too. Even without the signposting of the three fragments of Lenau’s poem Don Juan which Strauss quotes, the listener would have a pretty accurate view of the drama from this impeccably paced account. The dissipation, disillusionment and disintegration of the protagonist are vividly etched with some superb solo playing from the Orchestra. I was on the edge of my seat throughout.
Ein Heldenleben is a more complex proposition. Written ten years on from Don Juan, it’s more obviously ambitious, both a homage to and an updating of Beethoven’s Eroica. A divide exists between Straussians who rather wish that the composer had not ever provided titles for the movements (which he later asked to be removed) and those who insist they’re essential information for proper enjoyment of the work. Wherever one stands on this, I think there is little doubt that conductors of the work need to have a strong internal vision of a story to render the work in a coherent fashion. How else, for example, to make sense of the extraordinary dialog between violin and orchestra in the work’s third movement or the greatest hits medley in the fifth? Graf clearly has the strongest possible sense of a framework and it’s evident that a lot of preparation has gone into this performance. It suffused with a sense of theater and rhetoric, yes, but it’s also deeply human. Listen to the heartbreaking tenderness of that third movement (“Des Helden Gefährtin”) in this performance with exquisite playing from concertmaster David Coucheron for a supreme example of the latter quality. And what about actual heroism? It’s here aplenty, from the stirring and supremely confident symphonic projection of the opening movement to the poignant trumpet fanfare of the last.
For lovers of Strauss’s tone poems this album will be bliss. Apart from the many virtues of the playing—which I hope I have given some sense of—I don’t know that I have ever heard a better recorded version of these works. OUR have provided spectacular sonics from the Esplanade Concert Hall in Singapore, immersive, colorful, resonant. In short, I don’t know that there are many better experiences as a listener than luxuriating in the Straussian universe when playing and recording are this good. Dominic Hartley