This is a budget-priced repackaging of Deutsche Grammophon’s deleted 1988 Böhm/Strauss collection, with slightly better sound this time around. The program notes go into deep detail about the music yet curiously shed no light on Karl Böhm’s long-standing advocacy of this repertoire, his working friendship with the composer, or his close bonds with the Dresden Staatskapelle. The latter is featured in a live 1972 Tod und Verklärung from Salzburg and in 1957 mono recordings of Don Juan, Eine Alpensinfonie, and Ein Heldenleben. In the 1950s, this very Don Juan faced imposing competition from Reiner/Chicago, Furtwängler/Vienna, and Toscanini/NBC, and still does. It’s the least interesting of Böhm’s Don Juans, outclassed by the superior balances and robust energy of his pre-war Dresden traversal, and his lighter, more transparent 1974 Berlin Philharmonic recording. While Ein Heldenleben’s heroic passages are underplayed (with the percussion stuck way out in the hinterlands) you can’t help but admire the linear clarity Böhm conjures from the Hero’s Adversaries (he’s one of the few conductors who doesn’t let the “Eduard Hanslick” tuba phrase lag slightly behind the beat). If you must have a 1950s vintage Heldenleben, though, Reiner/Chicago and Karajan/Berlin benefit from still-excellent-sounding stereo.
I’ve never warmed to Böhm’s sober, workaday Eine Alpensinfonie, nor to its dry, slightly constricted engineering. The mammoth scoring requirements of this work cry out for sumptuous sound and over-the-top conducting, neither of which you’ll find in Böhm’s sober interpretation. The Dresden musicians play well in a stirringly contrasted Tod und Verklarung, if you can tolerate the coughers in the audience during the quiet opening. Little new can be said about Böhm’s straightlaced, exceptionally clear Also Sprach Zarathustra, Dance of the Seven Veils, Waltzes from Der Rosenkavalier, and Till Eulenspiegel with the Berlin Philharmonic, all long-familiar from past reissues. But not even Böhm can shake the tawdry, jingoistic Festival Prelude from its secure position on my list of the 10 worst compositions written by major composers.
