Apart from the composer himself, there has in general been no more idiomatic interpreter of Richard Strauss's scores than his friend Clemens Krauss, who directed the first performance of Arabella and Die Liebe de Danae, was the librettist of Capriccio, and to whom Der Friedenstag was dedicated. Strauss himself said that ''Krauss gets more out of my music than I put into it''. Three things about all the present performances immediately impress the listener: Krauss's immense care over the articulation and shaping of phrasing, his sympathetic observance of tonal shadings, and the clarity he brings even to complex textures—the canons in the Courante of the Bourgeois gentilhomme, for example, have never been so effective. Though, from the sound of it, on this occasion the Vienna Philharmonic—even the solo violin and solo cello—are less than fully at home with the suite (Krauss was to record it again for Decca 20 years later—2/53), there is an attractive lightness and buoyancy about the Overture (with the violin line rather too dominant, however) and a grace about the Entry of Cleonte; but, as in the later version too, there is a surprising coldness about the romantically harmonized Lully Minuet. The ''Dance of the seven veils'' is admirably paced and builds up tension skilfully, though overall this is a less wildly erotic reading than some. (There is some noisy surface swish in the last few moments of this.)
It is the Brahms symphony (the only one Krauss recorded) that is likely to prove controversial. The first movement, taken lyrically rather than weightily, is flexible but retains its shape: elsewhere the frequent vacillations of speed are obtrusive and disturb the continuity. (One notes, also, the untidy first chord in both the first two movements; did Krauss have an unclear downbeat?) The Andante starts deliberately, gathers pace at the amplification of the subject (1A30B in), goes much slower at the second subject (clarinet and bassoon in octaves), picks up on the strings ten bars later, only then to drop substantially (and with a very large ritardando, not a poco rit., at the end): the third movement, played lusciously romantically, lingers, or rather loiters, at the string passage (2A30B in) and its coda is taken excessively slowly; and the finale's course is interrupted by a sudden portentous slowing-down at the solemn passage at bar 20 (0A30B in). Such indulgence to the mood of the moment, one feels, runs counter to Brahms's carefully considered structural build-up.'