Three other great recordings

Antoni Wit (conductor) If you don’t like downloads or streaming, this richly enjoyable

2009 performance by the Staatskapelle Weimar is the leading option on CD. Antoni Wit’s tempos are consistently broader than most, but that allows the warmth of Strauss’s orchestration to radiate, with no significant loss of detail.

The Weimar violins are especially impressive, phrasing with a natural pliability and feeling for the long-spun, lyrical melodies. Naxos’s engineering sets the players in a concert-hall perspective, with pleasingly high levels of transparency. (Naxos 8.570895)

George Szell (conductor)

The Symphonia Domestica is so intricately orchestrated that any weaknesses in individual sections or players are glaringly obvious. There’s no danger of that in this Cleveland Orchestra recording. Made in 1964 for Strauss’s centenary, it still scorches all the others in the unshakable virtuosity of its playing. Szell’s tempos are on the quick side but never rushed, and the Cleveland players have an uncanny ability to combine chamber-like delicacy with blockbusting ensemble impact.

In 24-bit, high resolution format particularly, it makes for an enthralling experience. (Columbia G010003872250P)

Rudolf Kempe (conductor)

An outstanding Strauss conductor, Rudolf Kempe’s

1972 Symphonia Domestica sits midway between

Wit’s geniality and Szell’s pinpoint precision. The Staatskapelle Dresden premiered many of Strauss’s operas, and its players understand Kempe’s affectionate micro-rubatos instinctively. Their bounding athleticism is never muscle-bound, and the love music is passionately delivered, though dignity and decorum are maintained in even the steamiest moments. A long, venerable tradition of Strauss interpretation is distilled in this rendition. (Warner Classics 9029554251)

And one to avoid…

The concert from which this was taken was the last Wilhelm Furtwängler conducted in the old Berlin Philharmonie concert hall before Allied bombers flattened it in 1944. Through the foggy, dynamically pinched recording (complete with audience coughing), one discerns an incandescent performance by the Berlin Philharmonic. But sonically it’s a severely limited experience, which Symphonia Domestica should never be.