Gramophone June 2021
Editor's choice

Bertrand Chamayou (piano), Roberto Gonzales-Monjas (violin), Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Antonio Pappano

Strauss, R: Ein Heldenleben, Op. 40
Strauss, R: Burleske for Piano and orchestra in D minor, AV85

Antonio Pappano conducts Rome’s Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in two works from the earlier phase of Richard Strauss’s career: a comparative rarity, the mercurial, virtuosic Burleske for piano and orchestra, with Bertrand Chamayou as soloist, and the epic autobiographical tone poem Ein Heldenleben, one of the composer’s orchestral masterpieces. “Strauss always thought dramaturgically,” says Pappano. “Recording this music in Italy, the link has to be through opera, with all its theatricality, temperament, contrast and colour …You need a certain charisma in the sound, which these players achieve.”