1864-1949
Performance Dates
November 9/10/11 - Also Sprach Zarathustra
January 25/27 - Der Rosenkavalier - excerpts
Richard Strauss was a German composer of classical music particularly noted for his tone poems and operas. He was also a noted conductor.
As assistant conductor for the court opera at Weimar beginning in 1886, the young Strauss had many claims on his time, what with rehearsals and performances of such demanding works as The Flying Dutchman, Tannhäuser,
Euryanthe, and The Magic Flute. In addition, he gave orchestral concerts heavily weighted with music of Wagner, Liszt, and Berlioz – this with a provincial orchestra possessing only six first violins. That he also made time for composition is a tribute to his drive and dedication and to the stamina of youth.
He completed Death and Transfiguration even before the first performance of its
predecessor, Don Juan, and premiered it at a festival of new music in Eisenach. Both tone poems soon were played throughout Germany and beyond; Death and Transfiguration even had a New York performance in 1892. The reception was generally favorable, although, as with most new music, there were those who disagreed. Debussy wrote that it was “built out of undistinguished material.” Romain Rolland referred to it as “one of the most disturbing” of new works. Strauss, however, thought so highly of the piece that he quoted its main theme in Ein Heldenleben and again, at the end of his long composing career, in the Four Last Songs. It is remarkable that a robust young man of 25 could write so perceptive a work concerned with illness and death. (Although Strauss did have a serious attack of pneumonia between the tone poem’s completion and its first performance, the stories that he was deathly ill when he wrote it are in error.) All the alternations of suffering, boredom, and remorseful memory are convincingly portrayed. Especially vivid are the moments of faltering heartbeat and the hammer strokes of intense pain. For many years, Death and Transfiguration was the composer’s most popular work with concert audiences, perhaps because it has the most detailed program or story. Strauss wrote the program himself and then asked a poet composer friend named Alexander Ritter to put it into verse.
Last Updated: 08/31/2006 |
Richard Strauss 
