Der Rosenkavalier: Suite

Richard Strauss (1864–1949)

Der Rosenkavalier: Suite

In April 1945 a detachment from the American Army drove into Garmisch, a town in Bavaria, looking for houses they could requisition for their own use. They particularly liked the look of 42 Zöppitzstrasse and would surely have turned out the residents of that very desirable villa if the old man who met them at the door had not had the presence of mind to announce, “I am Richard Strauss, the composer of Der Rosenkavalier and Salome.” It says much for the widespread reputation of those works that the officer in charge of the operation recognised Strauss as the great composer he was and ordered his sergeant to take over another house.

Der Rosenkavalier was popular not only in the opera house but also on record, on film and, thanks to a variety of excerpts and arrangements, in the concert hall. Strangely, however, although the Rosenkavalier industry had flourished from the first performance of the opera in Dresden in 1911, Strauss himself made no orchestral arrangement from it until 1944, when he put together a sequence of waltzes (the Erste Walzerfolge) from the first two acts. That didn’t get performed, however, until 1946, by which time another, more comprehensive Rosenkavalier Suite had been heard in New York under the direction of Artur Rodzinski, who is believed to have had at least a part in compiling it. Strauss agreed to its publication, by Boosey & Hawkes in 1945, presumably because, temporarily cut off from his royalties after the end of the War, he needed the money.

Although Rodzinski’s (assuming it is his) Rosenkavalier Suite does not present its several episodes in the order in which they appear in the opera, it at least begins at the beginning. Strauss calls the opening section not a “prelude” but an “introduction,”significantly enough, because the action has already begun, before the curtain rises, with a love scene between the young Count Octavian and the Feldmarshallin (Field Marshall’s wife), Princess Werdenberg. Their respective motifs – his a virile, upward-thrusting horn call, hers a more yielding melody on woodwind and strings – intertwine in an extraordinarily passionate, vividly graphic development. When the erotic fervour dies down two new themes, both of them highly expressive on string and woodwind, serve as a reminder of the Felmarschallin’s maturity and her insecurity in a relationship with a lover half her age.

The next major extract, which begins with an intimate oboe solo, confirms the Feldmarschallin’s vulnerabilty. At her suggestion, Octavian has been sent by the impoverished and boorish Baron Ochs to present on his behalf a ceremonial silver rose to Sophie von Faninal, a rich merchant’s daughter whom he intends to marry to restore his fortunes. In a scene of great melodic beauty – punctuated by magically shimmering silver harmonies on flutes, solo violins, celesta and harp – Sophie and Octavian fall in love. The course of their love is not allowed to run smooth, however. After a recall of the silvery harmonies and Sophie’s oboe melody, we meet Valzacchi and Aninia who, working as spies for Ochs, literally arrest the young couple in a short but dramatic passage of tumult and denounce them to Ochs.

Although the waltz did not exist in the Vienna of Maria Theresa, in which (mid-18th century) period the opera is set, it is a consistent feature of the score, not least in the music of Baron Ochs. Before he is totally discredited in the eyes of Sophie and her father, he is identified with one waltz tune in particular, the (for him) almost too charming main theme of the next section. Seductive though it is, however, it never actually gets him anywhere with his intended victims. Remarkably, another waltz tune becomes the basis of the most sublime episode in the whole work, the trio – liberally treated here – where the Marschallin renounces Octavian while he and Sophie can scarcely believe their luck. After a last recall of the silver-rose music, the suite ends with a wildly accelerated episode based on the Ochs waltz tune.