Ballet music is not something Richard Strauss is often remembered for, and Josephs Legende is relatively unknown. It was written to a commission from the Ballets Russes and premiered by the company in 1914 – by which time the impresario, Diaghilev, had fallen out with planned star dancer Nijinsky, and nobody else involved was very happy either. The scenario – based on the story of Joseph (of the coat of many colours) and Potiphar’s wife – had been co-written by Strauss’s regular opera librettist Hofmannsthal, who hoped Strauss might return to the fascinatingly twisted biblical world of his opera Salome. Instead, Strauss looked towards rococo art, then confessed to losing interest altogether.
The result, written for an impractically well-stocked orchestra including four harps, a wind machine and a heckelphone (a kind of oboe on steroids), and often nodding towards the roughly contemporaneous Alpine Symphony, has striking moments including a skittering, recurring solo violin; an unsettling dance to attempt to drive away Joseph’s “evil” spirits. It’s not top-drawer Strauss, although devotees will still want to hear it. Fabrice Bollon, conducting, doesn’t wallow in the music’s richness, but neither does he give the impression that it’s much worth savouring, and the performance emerges sounding rather perfunctory.
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