Richard Strauss’ Enoch Arden with Benjamin Luxon and pianist, Joshua Luxon-Robinson

Richard Strauss wrote Enoch Arden for the actor Ernst von Possart, who in 1896 had assisted him in obtaining the post of Chief Conductor at the Bavarian State Opera. It was well received by audiences and Strauss’s reputation was enhanced more by it than by his symphonic poems. The work has been described as falling within the genre of incidental music. It consists mainly of brief interludes indicative of changes of time and setting, as well as moments of punctuation and commentary. As it was never intended to be primarily a piece of music but a dramatic presentation with musical accompaniment, performances of Enoch Arden are largely dependent on the speaker rather than the pianist.

Enoch Arden was popular in its day, and in recent years the work has attracted some notable names for the speaker’s role, including Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Jon Vickers, Michael York, Claude Rains, Benjamin Luxon, Patrick Stewart and Gwyneth Jones, and the pianist’s role Glenn Gould, Jörg Demus, Stephen Hough, Emanuel Ax, and Marc-André Hamelin.

Raindate: Sunday, July 24 at 6pm