Richard Strauss

This mix of new and archive recordings reflects Renaud Capuçon’s enduring love for the music of Richard Strauss. Above all, it demonstrates his ability to grace the German composer’s soaring Romantic melodies with French charm. There’s a delicious lightness to his playing throughout the early Violin Concerto, in which Capuçon resists the temptation to take its teenaged creator’s grand gestures too seriously while striking an ideal balance between playfulness and heartfelt expression. The better known Violin Sonata, another early work, unfolds here with extraordinary tenderness, prefiguring the sustained emotional intensity brought by Capuçon and company to Strauss’ late Metamorphosen, written during the desolate final months of the Second World War and presented here in its sextet version. Finally, the dashing violinist leads the band in a noble account of Ein Heldenleben, made during his early twenties with the Gustav Mahler Jugend Orchester.