Carnegie Hall

Hearing a legendary composer conduct the world premiere of their own work is a quintessential Carnegie Hall experience—one that has thrilled audiences many times since the Hall’s opening in 1891. On March 21, 1904, Richard Strauss took the podium to lead the Wetzler Symphony Orchestra in the very first performance of his Symphonia domestica.

Richard Strauss in Love

Strauss met soprano Pauline de Ahna in 1887 and created the lead female role, Freihild, for her in Guntram, his first opera. They worked closely together, fell in love, were married in 1894, and had a son in 1897. Strauss’s family and home life inspired his Symphonia domestica.

By the time of his marriage, Strauss’s career was already flourishing. After the tremendous success of his 1889 tone poem (an orchestral work that tells a story) Don Juan, he was considered Wagner’s heir. In the years that followed, Strauss composed a steady stream of orchestral masterpieces that are now concert-hall staples: Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche, Also sprach Zarathustra, and Ein Heldenleben.

Symphonia domestica

Strauss never lacked confidence—something his critics perceived as arrogance. His lavishly scored Ein Heldenleben tells the story of a “great man”; while Strauss never directly said it was autobiographical, it is filled with quotations of his earlier music—plus, there’s a show-stopping section that depicts the hero at war with his critics. He planned a sequel portraying a day in the life of the Strauss household, on which he began work while on tour in Britain in 1902. His Symphonia domestica was finished the following year.

The Symphonia domestica is one movement that unfolds in four sections, making it more like a traditional symphony than any other work by Strauss. There are themes for each family member: a crying baby Franz and a lullaby; a love scene for Richard and Pauline; a family quarrel that begins with a double fugue in which the Richard and Pauline themes weave about each other; and a massive climax with the Richard theme thundering from the full orchestra. The orchestral colors of the Symphonia domestica are spectacular, its melodies gorgeous, and its tone heroic—quite a bit more than one would expect in a work about family life.

Richard Strauss at Carnegie Hall

The Strauss family made its first North American tour in 1904 with visits to New York, Boston, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Chicago. For his US debut at Carnegie Hall, Strauss conducted the Wetzler Symphony Orchestra in Ein Heldenleben. The Evening World newspaper proclaimed him the “great apostle of music realism” and the Chicago Tribune reported, “The long heralded American debut of Richard Strauss of Berlin, an important figure at the present time in the world’s field of music, was made in Carnegie Hall tonight at last in the Wetzler Symphony concerts before an immense audience, with notable enthusiasm.”

Over the course of the next week, he led the orchestra in several of his own works, including performances of Don Quixote with Pablo Casals as soloist, and accompanied Pauline in a song recital with baritone David Bispham. Later in March was the premiere of the Symphonia domestica, as well as performances with Strauss conducting the New York Philharmonic in his own music and Mozart’s “Jupiter” Symphony.

After the premiere, Strauss and the orchestra performed the Symphonia domestica in an unlikely venue: Wanamaker’s Department Store, downtown near Astor Place. The first floor of the store was converted into a concert hall where Strauss conducted two performances. Perhaps anticipating his critics, he said, “True art ennobles this hall, and a respectable fee for his wife and child is no disgrace even for an artist.”

Strauss’s Symphonia domestica doesn’t muse on metaphysical matters, the way Also Sprach Zarathustra or Death and Transfiguration do—that was never its intention. Instead, it showcases the splendid sounds a master composer can draw from a great orchestra. And for that, it is a tremendous triumph.

Concert memorabilia courtesy of the Carnegie Hall Rose Archives.