Here it is... the only Elektra I've ever heard that convinces me this is a serious piece of art and not just Strauss creating another moneymaking scandal for an audience he had contempt for. Sound sucks, still better than Carlos Kleiber's...
My preferred Elektra is simply not to listen... but if I must - Elektra is 1/3rd atonality, 1/3rd Mendelssohn, and 1/3rd Hollywood. It is a kind of cheap B-movie of an opera. Most of my preferred Elektra listening is not anybody else's. My favorite studio recording has always been Barenboim - which nobody likes except me. It flies by in an extremely un-Barenboim like manner, with an extra-atonality that makes it sound like Schoenberg. My Strauss maximizes all the obnoxious noises - every one of which is a middle finger to the pomposity of the Wagner crowd who took him up as heir to their savior. Strauss the joker is so far preferable to Strauss the philosopher.
Carlos Kleiber's sound is even worse than Tennstedt's. He fundamentally goes for the same atonal scherzo approach as Barenboim, but it's so sensationalized that it's much more Korngold than Schoenberg. Beecham and Steinberg both have much of that 'scherzo capriccioso character,' but Solti is just big dumb entertainment - this most famous of Elektras is a Vincent Price creeper of an opera - made into a cinema for the ears that inevitably makes you long for the real thing.... is it entertaining? Of course. Is it a serious artistic endeavor? Don't be insulting and just listen to Birgit Nilsson cackling maniacally through the reverb until the most stunning orchestral interlude Strauss ever wrote is completely subsumed by stupid laughing (or is it Regina Resnik? I always forget who's who in this opera... not that it matters when you're listening int the background....) . That recording is the best possible evidence that Strauss created this opera with complete cynicism. As for Karl Bohm, I generally have very little use for him... Karajan live is obviously explosive, but as is his way, he's also a bit wooden. Sawallisch and Bchkov are both objectively great, and I'm always glad to hear them rather than Solti or but they're Elektra as Brahms, and I just find an approach so loving creepy for such a bloody piece of music. Believe it or not, I still haven't listened to Mitropoulos or Jochum....
But this... it is ecstatic in a completely different way from what we're accustomed. Straussians will find it impossibly Mahlerian, but I'm no Straussian. It is slower than we're used to, and in that Mahlerian way, it almost sounds prayerful, like the sacred rite Aeschylus intended in which we are told truths too important to convey through any medium but the stage. Through the bad sound is ecstatic forebodding, a prediction of 20th century doom.
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