Strauss and Mozart

Pre-Concert Chat at 5:45 PM
Lawn Paver Bar

Richard Strauss

Metamorphosen, A Study for 23 Solo Strings

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Symphony No. 39 in E-flat Major, K. 543

Richard Strauss’s Metamorphosen is a profoundly mournful and beautiful work; written for 23 strings in the final days of World War II, it is the composer’s lament for the destruction of, in his words, “Germany’s 2,000 years of cultural evolution.” Its concluding theme is a musical homage to the funeral march from Beethoven’s “Eroica” symphony. Mozart’s Symphony No. 39 is the first of his final three great symphonies, one for which “refined elegance” might be an apt descriptor. It’s a rare treat for clarinet lovers: with oboes absent from Mozart’s score, the clarinets take on an unusually prominent role.

Alasdair’s take on the program:

This is a concert of darkness and light—Strauss’s Metamorphosen is a wounded cry from an old man surrounded by desolation and loss, while Mozart’s 39th symphony is bathed in a wonderful autumnal glow.