Richard Strauss' An Alpine Symphony

Mark Simpson compares recordings of Richard Strauss's Eine Alpensinfonie and chooses his favourite. The epic Alpine Symphony is Strauss's vivid evocation of the thrills and spills of a day out in his beloved Bavarian Alps, including dangerous moments and a glacier on the way up to a spectacular view from the summit. On the way down there's a violent thunderstorm and at the end, as the sun sets and night falls, the deep, emotional satisfaction of having completed an arduous and exhausting journey. The 1915 tone poem thrillingly tests an orchestra, at once collectively, its individual sections and its principal players. And it also tests a conductor who has to convincingly marshal a score calling for 130-plus musicians including 34 brass players (with 12 offstage horns) and a percussion section stocked with, among other things, wind machine, thunder machine and cowbells. Spare a thought, too, for the recording engineers... Presented by Andrew McGregor.