Berg: Three Pieces from Lyric Suite – Strauss: Suite from Der Rosenkavalier

Album review

The live recordings of the venerable Cleveland Orchestra have been gaining wider attention since the beginning of the group's distribution deal with the London Philharmonic's in-house label, and these recordings of works by Berg and Richard Strauss offer a good example as to why. The production values of the recordings have been very high, for one thing, and producer Elaine Martone snared a Best Classical Producer Grammy nomination in 2023 for her work here and elsewhere. The high strings of the orchestra sparkle in the Three Pieces from the Lyric Suite for strings of Berg, which lives up to the "lyric" designation despite its 12-tone construction. Both there and in the Strauss Suite from Der Rosenkavalier, Op. 59, the orchestra plays beautifully for conductor Franz Welser-Möst, achieving carefully etched detail. This is vintage Welser-Möst, sacrificing expression for precision, and some may like a more Viennese flavor in this nostalgic work from Strauss, but it certainly offers many details on hearings and rehearings. An added attraction is that this is not the usual 20-minute Rosenkavalier suite but a longer one devised by Welser-Möst himself, based on an earlier effort by Robert Mandrell, that seamlessly incorporates other orchestral music from the opera into a 42-minute romp. The recordings of the two pieces come from different concerts, one of which also included George Walker's Lilacs for voice and orchestra. It might have been nice to open this album with that performance (there was time available), creating a sequence of three works whose language progressively relaxes, but the pairing here also works beautifully and should draw new listeners to the orchestra's series.

© James Manheim /TiVo