Richard Strauss' Symphonia Domestica, Op. 53, has never been one of his more frequently performed works. It was savaged by German critics expecting the Olympian heights of Also sprach Zarathustra, and certainly not expecting a programmatic work introducing the members of the composer's family and even their alarm clock. The dissenters to this critical opinion, however, were the great American public, who mobbed not only the premiere at Carnegie Hall, conducted by Strauss himself, but two more hastily arranged performances at Wanamaker's department store. The key is to take the work's gentleness and its small details at face value, and this is accomplished admirably here by conductor Zubin Mehta, leading the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Even better, is the pairing on this live LPO concert: Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade, Op. 35, might seem poles away from the Symphonia Domestica in its contrast of eastern exoticism to Strauss' bourgeois world, but Mehta asks hearers to listen again. Both works are delicately orchestrated, a bit folkish in places, and they alternate action with big melodies in a similar way, and what melodies they are. Although Mehta's readings are on the restrained side, his "The Young Prince and Princess" movement offers a tune that will linger in the mind. A fine pairing of favorites from the London Philharmonic's in-house label.
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