Music by Richard Strauss,
set to the poem ‘Enoch Arden’
By Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Benjamin Luxon, narrator
Joshua Luxon Robinson, piano  

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. 

The great British baritone Benjamin Luxon CBE has performed in some of the most prestigious opera  houses and concert halls around the world. Since his debut with Benjamin Britten’s English Opera Group  (Britten would later write the title role of Owen Wyngrave specifically for him) he had been for many  years a regular guest artist with the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden and Glyndebourne – and from  there to the European opera houses of Amsterdam, Paris, Brussels, Frankfurt, Prague, the Metropolitan  Opera, Vienna State Opera and La Scala. He has worked with most of the world’s major conductors and  orchestras, and has made over 100 recordings.