I may be a busy beaver from September through May, but in the lazy summer months I have time to take on amusing and not terribly important projects. In addition to buffing up my record library and seeing to a few minor household issues, I have been having a fine time for several days now by deepening my relationship with Richard Strauss’ breakthrough tone poem Don Juan. The piece has become such an integral repertory item that it’s easy to forget that it established Strauss as a big-league contender. The Lisztian symphonic poem proved to be the ideal vehicle for Strauss’ protean imagination, so he left behind his erstwhile persona as a late classicist and devoted himself to weaving vivid musical tapestries. Even though Don Juan wasn’t technically his first foray into the genre (that honor belongs to Macbeth), it was Opus 20 that made Strauss a star.
And with good reason. Other than a few murky passages—he wasn’t yet the sublime orchestrator that he would become—Don Juan is perfectly paced and brilliantly executed. To me one of its finest attributes is the attractiveness of its main character. Strauss inherited that from his primary source, Nikolaus Lenau’s eponymous and unfinished poem about the fabled seducer of women. Unlike Da Ponte’s Don Giovanni, Lenau’s Don Juan Tenorio is neither amoral nor dragged down to hell. Instead he’s a guy who looks for love in all the wrong places, and in far too many of them. Despairing of ever achieving his heart’s desire, the Don more or less commits suicide by deliberately dropping his guard during a duel. In setting the story, Strauss wisely avoided blatant pictorialism (there is no stated program) and instead focused entirely on character. The Don is joyous, athletic, almost adolescent, but from time to time he displays intimations of a future majestic nobility. He’s a lover, not a fighter. Most of Don Juan is about love, however momentary and ephemeral, and shies away from overt violence or notions of retribution. It’s a sweet-tempered piece of music, often radiantly optimistic, and just as often breathtakingly beautiful.
It’s no casual walk in the park for its players. It just about kicked the band’s butt the first time around, but it didn’t take all that long for everybody to get the thing in hand. Don Juan is a staple nowadays, a popular concert-hall showpiece, and is available in umpty-million recordings.
I know only a fraction of that umpty-million, but I have a few thoughts to offer. A really bad Don Juan is a rarity, but there are those that distinguish themselves for various reasons, not all of them positive.
1951: Herbert von Karajan conducts the Philharmonia Orchestra (EMI)
The second of Karajan’s five recordings of Don Juan is the standout. An earlier 1943 performance with the Concertgebouw offers exquisite violin playing but mostly demonstrates just how smitten the young Karajan was with Furtwängler. This 1951 Don Juan was Karajan’s maiden LP voyage with the Philharmonia, and he was out to make magic. He succeeded. EMI’s early-50s audio is perhaps a bit jangly, but in some ways that suits the performance, which is vibrant, energetic, muscular, flamboyant, heart-rending, and thrilling. It’s guaranteed to be a revelation to anyone who associates Karajan with coiffed, lacquered, and air-conditioned orchestral textures. That was later. This was earlier. In 1951 HvK was a lanky sexpot at the head of a crackerjack orchestra, in a great venue (London’s Kingsway Hall), recording with the trailblazing producer Walter Legge. Other than the edgy sound, I have nothing but praise for this performance. None of Karajan’s later Don Juans—Vienna 1959, then Berlin in 1973 and 1983—come anywhere near the fire, fleetness, suppleness, and exuberance of this, a no-brainer contender for the winner’s circle of all-time great Don Juans.
1950: Pierre Monteux conducts the San Francisco Symphony (Standard Hour Broadcast, issued on Music & Arts)
Monteux’s live Standard Hour broadcast, available only as part of a 13-CD set, isn’t likely to be on many radars, but it has something precious to offer despite its so-so audio quality. Over the previous fifteen years Monteux had buffed the SFS into a lean, mean, fighting machine. It was a flexible instrument capable of following him just about anywhere. Sometimes—as happens several times in this performance—that meant leaping headlong off a cliff as their irrepressibly ebullient Maître whipped up the tempo past any human hope of accuracy. Monteux’s seasoned crew faked it with the gusto that comes only with practice. But there was more to Monteux than lightning and quicksilver. He was an authentic master musician who had the self-confidence to give full rein to his best players, and no member of the San Francisco Symphony enjoyed Monteux’s sincere regard more than principal oboist Merrill Remington. The middle section of Don Juan is devoted to a meltingly beautiful oboe solo that develops gradually into a duet with the clarinet. Monteux simply steps out of Remington’s way and lets him play his heart out. The solo that emerges is luminous, aching with yearning, always fresh, and apparently spontaneous. For me, it is the Don Juan oboe solo to end all Don Juan oboe solos. Thirteen years later Remington repeated the solo during Josef Krips’ inaugural concert as the SFS’s new music director. Remington could still play the spots off the thing, but this time around he was under much stricter supervision. He plays well enough, but since Krips doesn’t give him much leeway, it’s a pale reflection of a former glory. The Krips performance isn’t commercially available, by the way.
1951: Arturo Toscanini conducts the NBC Symphony Orchestra (RCA)
It shouldn’t be surprising to hear that Toscanini’s Don Juan comes off like a modern-day performance, rhythmically exact, technically pristine, flawless in intonation and overall execution. It is also resolutely no-nonsense, and that shouldn’t be surprising, either. Toscanini is one of the very few conductors who keeps the tempo rock-steady at five bars after B, a coquettish moment that will be repeated tranquillo four bars later. Most conductors let up on the gas the first time around as well, but not the Maestro. Strauss didn’t mark a tranquillo at five after B so there won’t be a tranquillo at five after B, maledicta! However, Toscanini’s tempo for the main theme (right at the beginning) is relatively slow, at least compared to Karajan and Monteux. It doesn’t sound slow, however, thanks to the incisiveness of the orchestra’s attack and the crystal-clarity of the rhythms. This is a doggone fine Don Juan. I can’t say I love it, but I sure admire it. Robert Bloom plays the oboe solo well enough, but it’s overall a bit drab, especially compared to Remington’s sorcery. I know of only one oboist who really gives Remington a run for his money. I’ll identify him a bit farther along.
1954: Fritz Reiner conducts the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (RCA)
Amongst record afficionados this is one of the legendary Don Juan performances. Bully for record afficionados. But I don’t care for it. This isn’t Lenau’s Don Juan, nor do I think it’s the one Strauss envisioned, either. This guy strikes me as much more in the Mozart/Da Ponte mold, a thoroughgoing asshole who lives without compassion and who richly deserves every moment of the hellfire that is his destiny. That’s no fault of the orchestra’s; they play superbly, and the very early stereo recording has held up rather well despite an audibly degraded master tape. It’s just an aggressive and sometimes mean-spirited approach to the piece, cold and powerful rather than sparkling and passionate. Vintage Reiner, in other words.
1957: William Steinberg conducts the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra (Capitol/EMI)
Pittsburgh was Reiner’s orchestra before it was Steinberg’s, and I think even as late as 1957 a lingering aura of Reiner surliness remained. Steinberg was a far less intimidating conductor than Reiner, and he was also far less imaginative. The end result is a corporate-sounding Don Juan that is redeemed by Pittsburgh’s pride and joy: the best brass section on the planet. In quite a few orchestras the horns approximate or even bobble Strauss’s intricate arabesques, but not in Pittsburgh. They nail everything with the steely authority of a Zippo lighter being snapped shut after lighting up a Chesterfield. They glow like the burnished chrome on a 1959 Caddy Eldorado. The Pittsburgh brass is among the very few to avoid bungling the afterbeat staccato chord 11 bars after V (the leadup to the reprise, or recapitulation if you are so misguided as to think that Don Juan is in sonata form.) Most of the time it just sounds like a fart. But the Pittsburgh boys get it perfectly, every note just right, allowing it just enough length so it’s a chord and not a belch. It’s the brass that distinguishes the Steinberg/Pittsburgh recording; without that, it’s little more than middling.
1990: Herbert Blomstedt conducts the San Francisco Symphony (Decca)
For me the all-around recording of choice is Herbert Blomstedt in San Francisco, on Decca. It has just about everything that I hold dear—elegance, vivacity, power, imagination, passion, pacing. The audio is exemplary, Blomstedt’s leadership is faultless, and the orchestra’s technical prowess is beyond question. By a very cool coincidence, it’s another San Francisco principal—this time William Bennett—who conjures up a bewitching oboe solo to rival Remington’s. The SFS brass section is just as authoritative as Pittsburgh’s; they get the ‘fart’ chord just right as well. The winds are to die for. The strings are elegant and silky, but—here’s my one downcheck—they’re a little thin. That was an SFS shortcoming back in those days. It’s not an issue any more; nowadays the SFS is blessed with glorious strings to match the rest of its exemplary self. Well, the SFS has made multiple recordings of quite a few works, so…hmmmmm….maybe….