Richard Strauss
Der Rosenkavalier – Suite (arr. attrib. to A. Rodziński)
Salome – final scene
Ein Heldenleben
Elza van den Heever (soprano)
The Met Orchestra
Yannick Nézet‐Séguin
Reviewed by: Curtis Rogers
Reviewed: 26 August, 2026
Venue: Royal Albert Hall, London
In the eagerly anticipated debut at the Proms by New York’s opera house ensemble the Met Orchestra – their first of two concerts – Strauss alone was on the programme, but the centrepiece was one of his tone poems, Ein Heldenleben. Dramatic and programmatic it may be, but it’s not entirely a picaresque scenario – unlike Till Eulenspiegel or Don Quixote say – and Yannick Nézet‐Séguin didn’t try and make it so. Instead, he brought comparative thoughtfulness and flexibility compared with other accounts which go more for technicolour effects and brashness.
The luminous, arching melody of the opening was personable not pompous, but that first section still built an impressive head of steam without grandiloquence or bluster. The weedy appearance of the music critics in the next could have been more niggling (perhaps Nézet‐Séguin was content to let us off the hook this evening without too grotesque a caricature) but it prepared for a fairly brittle onslaught with the composer-hero later, the forces more evenly matched than usual and reaching an epic climax.
In between came a delightfully whimsical portrayal of the hero’s companion by Met Orchestra leader Benjamin Bowman with all the charm of a Paganini caprice, rather than a mere one-dimensional seductiveness expressed as a dry exercise in violin technique. In the ‘Hero’s Works of Peace’ and ‘Retirement’ the vivid pastoralism of gently twinkling harp and the seamlessly spun cor anglais solo instilled calm, winding down to a touching conclusion. Other interpretations may end more cathartically but this grew consistently and movingly out of what went before.
In the concert’s opening half were extracts from two of Strauss’s most admired but also most contrasting operas. First an elegant, buoyant account of a Suite made in 1945 from the pre-First World War Der Rosenkavalier, usually attributed to Artur Rodziński but it is not known for certain. Although it features less of the dance than earlier ‘waltz sequences’ deriving from this opera, there was plenty of Schwung when it came here (corresponding to a passage from Act Two) giving way to a slow but intimate approach to the Act Three Trio. Lucid textures and tempo that at least flowed kept it from cloying, however.
The orchestra certainly had tonal weight which it deployed to more lurid, sensational effect in the final scene from Salome as the title character addresses the decapitated head of Jochanaan (John the Baptist), but Nézet‐Séguin was also careful to keep fulsome sonority in check to cultivate the music’s eerie nature too. At one point a lyrical outpouring from the strings (at “there was nothing in the world as white as thy body”) also seemed to hark back to the rococo eroticism of Der Rosenkavalier. A curdled horn line hauntingly stood out, clashing against the background orchestral chords, pre-empting the notoriously dissonant climax to come, and sly, amorous slides on the viola as Salome notes that she has kissed Jochanaan’s mouth linked the monologue back to the fearful whelps high up in the cellos at the beginning of the scene as the prophet is being beheaded.
That would have passed for comparatively little had it not been for Elza van den Heever’s completely inhabiting and dramatising the role, as though it were acted out on stage and not given simply in recital. She drew back or soared with a fine silken line as the text required, sometimes little more than a murmur, at others projecting a lyrical hauteur over the full orchestra. Most tellingly, in her final paragraph on bestowing that fateful kiss and recognising “the taste of love”, her questions were uttered with an affected innocence before her singing swelled in radiant ecstasy as though a teenage girl enraptured by love for the first time. With the few blunt chords of Herod’s men rushing on to stamp out the perversity, it was all over. In all, another memorable contribution to the series of Strauss Proms this year.