7th Symphony Concert

Richard Strauss Feierlicher Einzug der Ritter des Johanniterordens, Op. 103
Richard Strauss Four Last Songs
Richard Strauss »Also sprach Zarathustra«, Op. 30

Even as a young man, Richard Strauss dared to take one orchestral flight of fancy after another, and Nietzsche's prophetic language, full of power and musicality, really challenged him to do so. However, Goethe's Faust theme also seems to have resonated in his Opus 30, completed in 1896. It fits the mystical intensity of the ingenious orchestral fantasy at almost as well as the eponymous »Zarathustra«. Thus, in a masterly, quasi-symphonic format, feelings and desires surge and ferment, yearning resists nature and good stands against evil. Humans may be called to higher things   but they must also want it ...

The Four Last Songs are regarded as the artistic and personal legacy of Strauss mellowed with age, resonating with the serenity at the end of an artist's life of over 80 years speaks just as much as the grief over war and loss. Retreat and self-reflection were the consequences for Strauss, who composed the songs in 1948 to poems by Hesse and Eichendorf, also alluding to his own composition Death and Transfiguration and to Brahms' German Requiem. Music full of hope for the hereafter, filled with the urge to immerse oneself once more in the beauty of the past. The Einzug der Ritter des Johanniterordens (Entry of the Knights of the Order of St. John), composed in 1909, rolls out a resounding red carpet for this programme.

Public dress rehearsal on Sunday, 11 a.m. in the Weimarhalle.
Tickets: 12,00 Euro, limited contingent