Till EulenSpiegel

asin: B000001GQT binding: Audio CD list price: $11.98 USD amazon price: $11.98 USD

Herbert von Karajan was a Strauss specialist, and if ever composer and conductor were united in musical philosophy, then these two were. Both favored making a beautiful, creamy, homogenized sound over just about all else, and von Karajan clearly relished the opportunities this music offered for playing that combined both tonal opulence and virtuosity. His Zarathustra (a.k.a. 2001: A Space Odyssey) is, along with Fritz Reiner's, probably among the two or three best performances preserved on disc, and von Karajan is nearly flawless on the other works as well. More good news: DG has given him warm, rich sound that's much better than their Berlin average. An essential Strauss collection. --David Hurwitz

asin: B000005E7M binding: Audio CD list price: $16.98 USD amazon price: $16.98

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra made one of the greatest recordings ever of Ein Heldenleben under Fritz Reiner, all the more reason to lament this 1991 release, the second of Daniel Barenboim's debut discs as the CSO's music director. It takes Barenboim just a few measures to dispel any notion that we are in for the kind of ride his predecessor gave the piece. The hero he portrays is a contemplative--one almost said self-absorbed--posturer, certainly not a man of action. From the flabby, grandiose treatment of the opening pages, through the cluttered mess of The Hero's Battlefield and its anticlimactic reprise of the hero's theme, to the glutinous hyperlegatos of The Hero's Works of Peace (where one of the harps is noticeably out of tune) and the Hollywood bathos of the score's denouement, this is as uninspiring a rendition as can be found. Only one ray of insight penetrates the darkness here, and that is co-concertmaster Samuel Magad's sympathetic portrait of "The Hero's Helpmate." The account of Till Eulenspiegel which prefaces the disc exhibits the same lack of attention to balances and textural detail that typified Barenboim's work in Paris, though the CSO still manages to play the piece with knife-edge precision and near-perfect attacks and releases. Erato's sound is decent, no better: the bass is tubby and poorly defined, the solo winds and the horns are unnaturally recessed, and the soundstage is only vaguely suggested. --Ted Libbey