6. SINFONIEKONZERT

RICHARD STRAUSS
The Bourgeois Gentleman –Orchestral Suite, Op. 60

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
Symphony No. 3 in E-flat Major, Op. 55, “Eroica”

The lively, sparkling comic music of Richard Strauss’s orchestral suite*The Bourgeois as a Nobleman* andLudwig van Beethoven’s groundbreaking, heroic Symphony No. 3 stand in striking musical contrast to one another. With his radical*Sinfonia eroica*, Beethovenshatteredthe boundaries of what was previously conceivable. Composed in 1803–04, it marks that famous “new path” that ushered the symphonic genre into a new era. Not only its monumental scale, but also its declarative character and burning idealism suddenly brought the music into the realm of the great questions and challenges of the time. Beethoven drew inspiration from none other than Prometheus—the mythological bringer of fire and enlightener of humanity.

Richard Strauss, too, broke new ground, so to speak, when he collaborated with Hugo von Hofmannsthal to adapt Molière’s ballet comedy*Le Bourgeois gentilhomme*—written some 240 years earliertothe music of Jean-Baptiste Lully—and reshaped it into something entirely new. Echoes of Lully’s French Baroque style blend with late-Romantic melody and harmony, foreshadowing Igor Stravinsky’s Neoclassicism. With springy rhythms, slender melodies, and colorful instrumentation, Strauss creates a charming, playful social satire of the nouveau riche Monsieur Jourdain, who tries by any means necessary to rise into aristocratic circles—yet ultimately fails because of his own vanity and pomposity.