CANCELLED: Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra

Goethe’s »Faust« had a firm place in 19th century bourgeois culture – and not in Germany alone. Many composers set the story to music, some of them freely. Among their number were Louis Spohr, Richard Wagner, Hector Berlioz, Charles Gounod, and later on Ferruccio Busoni and Alfred Schnittke.

Franz Liszt was already familiar with »Faust« before 1830, and in 1854, impressed as he was by Berlioz’s »La Damnation de Faust«, he decided to write his own »Faust Symphony«. However, Liszt’s score does not retell the story of the Goethe drama. Instead, he created three character studies in three symphonic movements: Faust, Gretchen and Mephisto.

A choral finale with a male choir, a tenor solo and the closing verses of Goethe’s »Everything transitory / is only an allegory« bring the work to a close in a mood of spiritual exaggeration.