Posted by Adam on July 06, 2000 at 15:49:07:
In Reply to: An Alpine Symphony posted by John on July 02, 2000 at 13:54:13:
You are right. This peice is underappreciated and not performed enough. I had the pleasure of performng it with the Binghamton Philharmonic two years ago. I too had never heard it and I was blown away at our first rehearsal. It is a difficult peice to perform in the sense that running a marathon is difficult. The 1st tuba is playing much of the 50 minutes and great volume is needed. I have a nice recording on CD by the Cleveland Orchestra under Vladimir Ashkenazy. Strauss himself was reported to have said ofthis work'" Now,at last, I've learnt instrumentation." I still don't think of it as a clear peice of program music but what an experience in sound!