Strauss: Sinfonia Domestica

Album review

Richard Strauss' Sinfonia Domestica (often known as "Symphonia Domestica") is a tone poem representing a day in the life of the Strauss household, complete with an alarm clock. To the critics, it was a disappointment compared to such weighty works as Also sprach Zarathustra, but the public, especially in the U.S., loved this lighter Strauss. Zubin Mehta has recorded the work several times, going all the way back to a live performance with the Vienna Philarmonic in 1972, but this album, released with the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra in 2023 when Mehta was 86, is not at all a retread of his earlier interpretations. Clocking in at 49:07, the reading is between five and six minutes slower, not only than Strauss' own recording in the 1940s, and not only than most other recordings, but even than Mehta's own earlier readings, one of them with the London Philharmonic as recently as 2020. Most of the added time goes to extend the amorous Adagio and the finale, fugally depicting a marital dispute followed by the joy of making up. Mehta certainly deserves credit for continuing to experiment at his advanced age, and listeners may be interested to hear the exploded view, so to speak, of the two final movements. The Philharmonic players rise to the challenges Mehta poses for the gigantic wind and brass sections, and the music has impressive transparency. It is also true that some of the humor is vitiated here, but one's mileage may vary. The news about the acoustics from the new Isarphilharmonie hall isn't great; the sound is a bit rough, and some clarity is lost even at the slow tempos, but Mehta fans will definitely value this fresh reading of a familiar Strauss work, and enough did so to put this recording on classical best-seller lists in the spring of 2023.

© James Manheim /TiVo