Rudolf Kempe's recordings of Richard Strauss have long been prized for their unparalleled clarity and subtlety in music that has come to define the late-Romantic temperament and its expression of highly strung emotions, whether in a state of Nietzschean exaltation, on the summits of `Also sprach Zarathustra' or in the post-war despair of `Metamorphosen'. Strauss loves the complex textures that Kempe and the Staatskapelle Dresden clarify with the utmost skill and sympathy.