Philharmonic Chamber Music Recital

By contrast, Richard Strauss wrote »Metamorphosen« at an entirely different point in his life: at the age of 81, as he felt the creeping shadows of death approaching. This composition is one of Strauss’s most important late works and it was written during a time of horror. First notes can be dated back to summer 1944 when death and destruction were rampant throughout Europe. The composer titled the three-part piece »Metamorphosen« – not variations – in which the themes transform almost imperceptibly during the course of the work. The end destination for these shifts is only revealed just before the end: Strauss quotes the beginning of the funeral march from Beethoven’s »Eroica« and writes: »In memoriam«. By doing so, he makes the work a lament for the world and life itself.

Although in an entirely different historical context, Arnold Schoenberg also found significant closing words in music. In 1899, he composed the string sextet »Verklärte Nacht« (»Transfigured Night«) – expressing, in a sense, his own end to the 19th century. The work provoked the most violent reactions at its premiere in Vienna in 1902. According to Schoenberg himself, it was »hissed and caused riots and fistfights«. A prime example, therefore, of how times and tastes change, as nowadays »Verklärte Nacht« ranks among the most beautiful in the string literature, beloved as an intoxicating work of turn-of-the-century music.