Richard Strauss At the End of the Rainbow Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.0

Richard Strauss At the End of the Rainbow Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman April 23, 2015

It may not have been an actual trial by fire, but I had one of my more eye opening learning experiences in music when I was probably 17 or so. I had been a facile pianist since early childhood and was already gigging professionally at clubs in my teens, but like many kids who find the standard musical curriculum a relative piece of cake, I had never really pushed myself to explore—seriously, anyway—huge orchestral showpieces. That all changed one afternoon when a highly gifted composer and classical pianist I knew sat me down with a huge printed score to Richard Strauss’ Also Sprach Zarathustra, set an LP (remember those?) spinning, and said to me, “Let me know if you get to the end of Side One at the same time Fritz (Reiner) does.” The opening measures tracing out those gigantic C major and minor tonalities are no huge score reading challenge, and I thought I was home free—until, that is, Strauss’ full orchestral weight was brought to bear on everything that comes after that awesome opening. I found myself breathlessly flicking through pages, searching (sometimes in vain) for what I thought I was hearing, marveling at virtually every bar that so much was going on on the page, some of which was only faintly audible to the ear. Strauss, who saw himself as the apotheosis of Western Music, typically stuffed so much musical content into his orchestral scores that listening to his most gigantic pieces like Ein Heldenleben can be an almost overwhelming experience. Even Strauss’ relatively more reserved offerings like Tod und Verklärung or Symphonia Domestica offer a richness of expression which makes them somewhat akin to the sonic version of the most decadent Bavarian chocolate cake imaginable. Richard Strauss At the End of the Rainblow is a sometimes slightly pretentious but ultimately quite winning documentary exploring this iconic composer’s oeuvre, while offering sometimes interesting, sometimes overly affected, analyses of various pieces. The documentary will probably be embraced by Straussians most ardently for its inclusion of rare archival film of Strauss conducting.

Strauss’ reputation is so oddly bifurcated at times that this documentary’s tendency to elide certain issues is perhaps understandable on one hand, though probably at least a little questionable on another. Long associated with the Third Reich, a not especially “fair” situation (as will be discussed in a moment), Strauss nonetheless had several Jewish relatives through marriage and walked a sort of tightrope at times, especially in the early days of Hitler’s rise to power, when Strauss was a mover and shaker in the Reich’s cultural vanguard. This, despite the fact that Josef Goebbels actually disliked (if not outright hated) Strauss, feeling the composer’s overheated orchestral pieces were “decadent.” It was a “mutual despisal society,” so to speak, with Strauss feeling Goebbels was a complete idiot, especially when composers as seemingly innocuous as Debussy were put on the Nazi “no fly list” (again, so to speak). All of this information is fascinating, and yet—it’s basically nowhere to be found in Richard Strauss At the End of the Rainbow.

There’s no question that Strauss, while ostensibly denying some of the race based excesses of Nazism, had long espoused a kind of German nationalism with regard to music in general and his work in particular. This perhaps unseemly egotism is at least handled tangentially in the documentary, though discursively in terms of Strauss’ love for Nietzsche and Strauss’ belief that his music was the apex of what could be achieved. While subsequent developments like Arnold Schoenberg’s twelve tone technique are at least mentioned in passing here, there’s no real “follow through” in terms of how Strauss felt about directions music took in the early 20th century, at a point when many of Strauss’ most epic tone poems were already being seen as hyperbolic vestiges of a bygone age.

Instead Richard Strauss at the End of the Rainbow tends to deal in more mundane if admittedly interesting information like some of the trials and tribulations the composer faced with his wife Pauline. There’s one actually hilarious set of interchanges read by pianist Stefan Mickisch where Pauline berates Strauss for having ruined her life and Strauss replies in a completely sanguine, “what, me worry?” manner that’s almost shocking in its refusal to accept the reality of the complaints. These moments, along with several other read sequences culled from letters or journals, help to offset less effective moments that include things like Mickisch himself offering pedagogical analyses of various Strauss motives or, for example, a recurrent look at a young Australian singer learning a Strauss aria.

As inconsequential as they may be, the best interview segments are with Strauss’ grandson Christian, who offers up more personal, cozy reminiscences of his iconic grandfather. If director Eric Schulz had knitted these into a more contextual environment which sought to elucidate Strauss’ sometimes rocky reputation in the sociopolitical upheavals of mid-20th century Germany, Richard Strauss At the End of the Rainbow may have found its documentary pot of gold. As it stands, this is a frequently interesting but weirdly piecemeal offering that will probably appeal most to those who already know the nuts and bolts of Strauss’ biography and may simply wish to view some of the more rare archival footage this piece contains.

Richard Strauss At the End of the Rainbow Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Richard Strauss at the End of the Rainbow is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of C Major and Unitel Classica with an AVC encoded 1080i transfer in 1.78:1. The contemporary interview and travelogue segments (there is a lot of train footage in this piece) are sharp and well defined, with an appealing and accurate looking palette, and very good to excellent detail and fine detail. Sharpness and clarity are also first rate in these segments. As should be expected, the various archival sequences vary in quality, with some of the "official" footage of Strauss conducting looking surprisingly spry for its age, despite quite a bit of damage at times, including scratches and speckling. What appears to perhaps be old home movies of Strauss tooling about his yard lacks the same general quality, but is still eminently watchable. There are some slight combing artifacts on display at times with regard to quick motions like batons waving in the air.

Richard Strauss At the End of the Rainbow Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

It's a little misleading to list only German as the language on display in this documentary's LPCM 2.0 soundtrack. At least one of the interview subjects actually speaks English, but the bulk of this enterprise is in fact in German. While there are of course snippets of Strauss' glorious music sprinkled rather liberally throughout the documentary, the bulk of this piece is either interviews or the read sequences, two elements where the LPCM 2.0 mix provides more than adequate support. There are no issues with damage, other than some expected age related wear and tear on the soundtracks of the archival footage.

Richard Strauss At the End of the Rainbow Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Aside from trailers for other C Major and Unitel Classica releases (items I never officially "score" as supplements in my reviews), there is no bonus material offered on this Blu-ray disc.

Richard Strauss At the End of the Rainbow Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I was frankly hoping for a little more in depth look at Strauss' career and especially his legacy (for good and/or ill) than Richard Strauss At the End of the Rainbow ended up providing. This is still a generally fascinating if not overly informative documentary, one that finds its peculiar distinction in "little" moments like those culled from the composer's letters and journals. A more thorough investigation of Strauss' thorny relationship with Nazism and his attempts to keep his Jewish relatives safe may have provided a bit more insight into how this overweening intellectual managed to navigate some of the roiling waters of his country's descent into madness, but taken on its own slight and generalist terms, Richard Strauss At the End of the Rainbow is not actually an "end" but more of a fitting beginning for those interested in finding out more about this legendary figure of late 19th and 20th century music. Recommended.