Paul Strauss was an American conductor who recorded light music for Deutsche Grammophon in the 1950s. His two most popular releases are gathered here in the yellow label’s “The Originals” series. Strauss had been conductor of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo and specialized in the two major pastiche ballets heard here: Gaîté parisienne, devised by Manuel Rosenthal from tunes of Jacques Offenbach, and Le Beau Danube, done up by Roger Désormière from music by members of the Viennese-waltz family Strauss. (Paul wasn’t related to them.) The recordings date to 1958 and 1959, respectively. The disc is fleshed out with three favorite overtures taped in 1960.
Listen only to the melody line and you hear sweet, well-phrased playing, with alert tempos and plenty of spirit. But listen more deeply and you find the rhythms are inflexible, as if designed less for musical effect and more to keep dancers in step. Listen to the rhythmic underpinning of Offenbach’s famous Barcarolle: the moderate 6/8 requires a gentle, connected pulse, not the detaché (in fact, almost staccato) beat Strauss imposes. The orchestra sounds smallish, which is not inappropriate for light music; but it should sound, by turns, Viennese, French, and Bohemian–not Prussian. Moreover, there are too many instrumental and ensemble weaknesses: clarinets are insecure in the middle range and shrill in the top, while the brass ensemble is often shaky.
Things get worse in the overture performances. At least the two string-of-tunes ballets (and the Auber overture, which also is a medley work) are okay in concept. But the Berlioz and Dvorák overtures are strongly structured sonata-movement works, a point that Strauss fails to make. Important details are often sluffed off, like the emphatic pair of chords that provides punctuation after the opening theme of the Carnival Overture. Where Dvorák quotes the definitive version of the theme that unifies this work with two other Dvorák overtures, the moment goes by without any special emphasis. Berlioz’s Corsair Overture has no sense of structure at all. Despite the nice remastering, this one is a pass.
