Der Stern Op.69 No.1 (1918)

Richard Strauss (1864-1949)

Der Stern Op.69 No.1 (1918)

Wiegenlied Op.41 No.1 (1899)

Allerseelen Op10 No 8 (1885)

Frühlingsfeier Op.56 No.5 (1906)

“Just now when I was waiting for you”, Richard Strauss told his friend Max Marschalk, “I took up my copy of Achim von Arnim and read the little poem Stern and, as I read, the musical inspiration came to me. I wrote the song down on the spot: if you like I’ll play it to you.” If Marschalk thought the song a slight treatment of a poem about the great 1811 comet and the future of Prussia he would surely have appreciated its spontaneous charm even so. Perceptive in its interpretation of every aspect of a text as erotic as it is maternal, Wiegenlied sustains one of the most rapturous of Strauss’s vocal melodies against a beautifully written accompaniment of shimmering arpeggios. Strauss had long been capable of that kind of inspiration, as the presence of Allerseelen (not to mention Zueignung) in his first published set of Lieder so convincingly demonstrates: the poetry of Gilm’s text is matched in spontaneously inflected melody, its sentiment intensified through a flexible construction embracing a lyrical piano introduction and postlude. And only Strauss at a time when had recently completed Salome and was just getting to work on Elektra, could have written such an impassioned, unrestrained treatment of the pagan sentiment of Heine’s Frühlingsfeier.