For a surprising number of people, classical music and mountain scenery have a lot in common. Richard Strauss' Alpine Symphony isn't one of his most popular works but it benefits enormously from being illustrated by photos of the Alps as it is in the DVD made by Tobias Melle. I'd often noticed it in music stores and wondered what it was like, so last week I decided to buy it and see. I wasn't disappointed.
The work illustrates a day's ascent on foot in the Alps, complete with sunrise, arrival at the peak, storm, sunset, and so on. Melle, an orchestral musician himself, decided to place the music alongside hundreds of his photos of his native Berchtesgaden Alps in southern Germany. This is not the Zugspitze that Strauss himself had in mind, Melle explains in a commentary included as a bonus. But because that now has a ski-lift on the summit, he felt that the Bavarian mountains he knows, an unspoiled area with five major massifs, would be an acceptable substitute.
Most valuable is that I have come to listen to the music again, and now find it intriguing, though restrained (for Strauss). The score is played by the Tonhalle-Orchester Zurich, with David Zinman conducting. I have to admit I missed the effects possible on film, the shadows of clouds moving across mountainsides in particular. But with artistic fades between shots, plus occasional montage, the overall result is certainly more than satisfactory.
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