“Burleske” by Richard Strauss is rarely performed. And the reason is that the solo piano part is so fiendishly complex. I listened to this music today, and it was great!
The Burleske for piano and orchestra, written when Strauss was 20, opens with a burst of youthful exhilaration and is full of confident high spirits, vigor, and vitality. Its drama and comedy, lyricism, humor, lightness, and delicacy foreshadow Strauss’ operas, while its glittering, masterful orchestration anticipates his symphonic poems.
The piano part is brilliantly virtuosic and fiendishly difficult (Bülow, for whom Strauss wrote it, rejected it as unplayable), but Argerich’s performance is fabulous: not only stunning technically, but absolutely “right” in its improvisatory liberties, its expressiveness, its sudden mood changes and transitions, and its joyful exuberance.
Here is the music with Martha Argerich:
