Musical Assets Orchestral music by Richard Strauss - heard by STEPHEN FRANCIS VASTA '... sensitivity and tenderness ...'

For all its musical assets, this Alpine Symphony has been sabotaged by the engineering. At a level that clarifies the low-register grumblings at the start, the climactic tutti sounds congested, strident, and all but unlistenable. A volume cut helped somewhat, but the basic sound of subsequent tuttis — as in track 13, at the top of the mountain — remains hard and insistent.Franz Welser-Möst has effectively learned his craft standing in front of the major orchestras, making large amounts of money in the process — an opportunity not afforded to most fledgling conductors — but he has evolved into a musician with something to say and, most of the time, the means to say it...

RICHARD STRAUSS

FRANZ WELSER-MOEST

INTERMEZZO

MUNICH

GERMANY

ORCHESTRAL MUSIC