Ein Heldenleben (A Hero’s Life), Opus 40

By Richard Strauss

BORN : June 11, 1864, in Munich

DIED : September 8, 1949, in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany

Ω COMPOSED : 1897–98

Ω WORLD PREMIERE : March 3, 1899, in Frankfurt, Germany, conducted by the composer

Ω CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA PREMIERE : February 2, 1928, conducted by Nikolai

Sokoloff

Ω ORCHESTRATION : 3 flutes, piccolo, 4 oboes (4th doubling english horn), 2 clarinets, E-flat clarinet, bass clarinet, 3 bassoons, contrabassoon, 8 horns, 5 trumpets, 3 trombones, tenor tuba, bass tuba, timpani, percussion (bass drum, tenor drum, snare drum, cymbals, tam-tam, triangle), 2 harps, and strings

Ω DURATION : about 40 minutes

RICHARD STRAUSS MADE NO SECRET of the fact that Ein Heldenleben (A Hero’s Life) is about himself. The hero is not Hercules, not El Cid, not Napoleon, but living, breathing Richard Strauss.

At the time, he was a notorious young German conductor and composer, age 34, who had neither fought in real battles nor rescued damsels in distress. Nor had his path to fame been a struggle. His father played principal horn in the court orchestra in Munich, and young Richard was introduced to leading German musicians as a boy. His natural talent was noticed and encouraged, and, with the right connections, he was soon launched on a successful career. Nonetheless, he thought a lot of himself.

The one big choice that all young German musicians had to make at the time, in the closing years of the 19th century, was whether to follow the flag of Richard Wagner or Johannes Brahms. Richard’s father had played for Wagner and disliked the music and the man. So instead of embracing the Romanticism of Wagner’s operas, young Richard Strauss was initially steered toward the more formal world of sonatas and quartets — music without storylines. He later found his true path, or a path that would serve the beginning of his career, between these two factions in the tone poem, a form pioneered by Franz Liszt.

Strauss’s first entry came with a four-movement depiction of Italian life, Aus Italien (1889), and then he embarked on a magnificent series of tone poems, creating one masterwork after another for more than a decade, concluding with the Alpine Symphony in 1915.

By 1897, he had taken on the subjects of Macbeth, Don Juan, Death and Transfiguration, Till Eulenspiegel, Thus Spake Zarathustra, and Don Quixote. Spanning contemporary philosophy to comic adventures, the quest for the meaning of life to earthy fantastical humor, Strauss must have felt there was no subject on earth he could not turn into a blaze of modern music.

Perhaps most importantly, he did it all with instruments. He had no need for text or voices. The scores include occasional headings to guide listeners and performers along the sonic journey, but the orchestra, with its intricate blend of sounds, had become in Strauss’s hands so expressive that any attentive listener was expected to follow the action or the argument without additional help.

Strauss is said to have boasted that he could portray a teaspoon in music, and he came close to literal representations of this kind. Few people questioned the aesthetic rectitude of using music as a paintbrush or as a storyteller. In fact, long before Vivaldi’s Four Seasons there had been a growing glossary for how to mimic a large number of worldly sounds. Military scenes or storms or birdsong were easy to transcribe; these were found everywhere. But there were no such models for composing abstract states of mind, philosophical quandaries, or the banalities of everyday life.

Strauss avoided that delicate issue by telling us what his pieces were about. And he dug deep into the repertoire of musical associations to find the right sonorities — the proper brushes and colors of paint, as it were — with which to illustrate them. If some of his critics felt that Thus Spake Zarathustra failed to enter the heart of Nietzsche’s philosophical thought, there was no question that Till Eulenspiegel brought its subject brilliantly to life. The choice for his next tone poem fell on Cervantes’s immortal Don Quixote, obviously as a follow-up to Till Eulenspiegel, since it recounts a series of humorous adventures in the picaresque tradition, all drawn from a classic masterpiece that most of his audiences would have known and loved.

Next, he decided to tell the story of his own life, in two tone poems: what became Ein Heldenleben and then Symphonie Domestica. (Though whether he initially conceived of the works as two pendants, or later set out to write a sequel to the original is less certain.)

In Ein Heldenleben, Strauss introduces himself, the Hero; portrays adversaries, his critics; presents his companion, his wife Pauline; shows off his work, his own music; and plans his retirement from the world — all done with self-confidence and élan that carry the listener along on the same glorious path.

The music is divided into six sections. The sections are clearly marked in the score and act like movements in a symphony, though they flow together without pause. Structurally, they are patterned out as a formally built framework of Classical sonata form — dividing the difference between Wagnerian emotion and Brahmsian formality. The Hero is represented in a series of energetic, virile themes. The orchestra, enlarged with more than 100 musicians, is fully engaged.

After introducing the Hero’s own theme with horns playing in E-flat major, a silence precedes the appearance of the Hero’s enemies: mean-minded critics who leave a trail of ugliness and spite, mostly conveyed by angular woodwinds supported by two clumsy tubas. The Hero has to step in and send them packing, especially since he wants to introduce his wife, personified by a solo violin. Her section of the work moves like operatic recitative or a solo cadenza with no clear tempo named. Her character is clearly changeable in mood, as Strauss well knew his wife to be, and shifts in and out of clear indications of any particular tonal key. Seductive and shrewish, sweet and severe — all these make up an honest portrait of the woman who stood by her genius husband for 55 years. Eventually, in the music, this develops into a love scene of great rapture leading to a state of repose.

The dreaded cackle of a critic is heard on the flute, and before long, the offstage trumpets signal an approaching battle. Once the snare drum enters the fray, the battle is fierce and hard-fought. All the work’s themes are hurled into the front lines in a display of orchestral virtuosity, as if the composer must tap every resource to survive. Sure enough, the Hero comes out on top, his critics are laid low in the dust, and the glorious victory of E-flat major, the main key of the work, is proclaimed.

Yet there are still additional paths to conquer, so a new key and a new theme on trumpet and violins leads into a section in which, after a short silence, Strauss creates a tapestry of quotations from his own earlier works, beginning with Don Juan. More than 30 snippets from previous tone poems and the opera Guntram are woven with the themes of the Hero and his wife, suggesting a lifetime of productive labor, the Hero’s “works of peace.” After that, even more doubt and adversity must be overcome before the Hero can truly claim serenity and peace as a reward for a life of toil.

In listening to Ein Heldenleben, we should not forget that Strauss was still a young man at the time of its conception. He was looking forward to what eventually became a long and productive life in the companionship of his wife, leading to the comfortable life of celebrity and satisfaction that he soon achieved. The final pages of Ein Heldenleben can also be heard as a prophecy of the beautiful works of Strauss’s final years, anticipating his late-career successes such as Metamorphosen for strings and the Four Last Songs

Macdonald

Franz Welser-Möst, Music Director

kelvin smith family chair

In addition to his commitment to Cleveland, Mr. Welser-Möst enjoys a particularly close and productive relationship with the Vienna Philharmonic as a guest conductor. He has conducted its celebrated New Year’s Concert three times, and regularly leads the orchestra at home in Vienna, as well as on tours.

FRANZ WELSER-MÖST is among today’s most distinguished conductors. The 2022–23 season marks his 21st year as Music Director of The Cleveland Orchestra. With the future of their acclaimed partnership extended to 2027, he will be the longest-serving musical leader in the ensemble’s history. The New York Times has declared Cleveland under Mr. Welser-Möst’s direction to be “America’s most brilliant orchestra,” praising its virtuosity, elegance of sound, variety of color, and chamber-like musical cohesion.

With Mr. Welser-Möst, The Cleveland Orchestra has been praised for its inventive programming, ongoing support of new music, and innovative work in presenting operas. To date, the Orchestra and Mr. Welser-Möst have been showcased around the world in 20 international tours together. In 2020, the ensemble launched its own recording label and new streaming broadcast platform to share its artistry globally.

Mr. Welser-Möst is also a regular guest at the Salzburg Festival where he has led a series of acclaimed opera productions, including Rusalka, Der Rosenkavalier, Fidelio, Die Liebe der Danae, Aribert Reimann’s opera Lear, and Richard Strauss’s Salome. In 2020, he conducted Strauss’s Elektra on the 100th anniversary of its premiere. He has since returned to Salzburg to conduct additional performances of Elektra in 2021 and Giacomo Puccini’s Il Trittico in 2022.

In 2019, Mr. Welser-Möst was awarded the Gold Medal in the Arts by the Kennedy Center International Committee on the Arts. Other honors include The Cleveland Orchestra’s Distinguished Service Award, two Cleveland Arts Prize citations, the Vienna Philharmonic’s “Ring of Honor,” recognition from the Western Law Center for Disability Rights, honorary membership in the Vienna Singverein, appointment as an Academician of the European Academy of Yuste, and the Kilenyi Medal from the Bruckner Society of America.

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NOW IN ITS SECOND CENTURY , The Cleveland Orchestra, under the leadership of music director Franz WelserMöst since 2002, is one of the most sought-after performing ensembles in the world. Year after year, the ensemble exemplifies extraordinary artistic excellence, creative programming, and community engagement. The New York Times has called Cleveland “the best in America” for its virtuosity, elegance of sound, variety of color, and chamberlike musical cohesion.

Founded by Adella Prentiss Hughes, the Orchestra performed its inaugural concert in December 1918. By the middle of the century, decades of growth and sustained support had turned it into one of the most admired globally.

The past decade has seen an increasing number of young people attending concerts, bringing fresh attention to The Cleveland Orchestra’s legendary sound and committed programming. More recently, the Orchestra launched several bold digital projects, including the streaming broadcast series In Focus, the podcast On a Personal Note, and its own recording label, a new chapter in the Orchestra’s long and distinguished recording and broadcast history. Together, they have captured the Orchestra’s unique artistry and the musical achievements of the Welser-Möst and Cleveland Orchestra partnership.

The 2022/23 season marks Franz Welser-Möst’s 21st year as music director, a period in which The Cleveland Orchestra earned unprecedented acclaim around the world, including a series of residencies at the Musikverein in Vienna, the first of its kind by an American orchestra, and a number of acclaimed opera presentations.

Since 1918, seven music directors —  Nikolai Sokoloff, Artur Rodziński, Erich Leinsdorf, George Szell, Lorin Maazel, Christoph von Dohnányi, and Franz Welser-Möst — have guided and shaped the ensemble’s growth and sound. Through concerts at home and on tour, broadcasts, and a catalog of acclaimed recordings, The Cleveland Orchestra is heard today by a growing group of fans around the world.