7. SINFONIEKONZERT

RICHARD WAGNER
Prelude to Act 1 of the operaLohengrin

RICHARD STRAUSS
Four Last Songs
"Feast of Spring,"Op. 56, No. 5

NIKOLAI RIMSKY-KORSAKOV
Scheherazade –Symphonic Suite, Op. 35
 

An evening poised between farewell and the allure of the unknown: Richard Strauss’sFour Last Songs are regardedas a moving retrospective and artistic legacy of his life, which spanned over 80 years. Composed in Switzerland in 1948 while in retreat following World War II, these songs—based on poems by Hermann Hesse and Joseph von Eichendorff—combine a premonition of death with an unshakable hope for the afterlife. When the question is posed at the end—“Is this, perhaps, death?”—the horn responds with the Transfiguration motif from Strauss’s tone poem*Death and Transfiguration*, composed six decades earlier.

Richard Wagner offers a foreshadowing of this redemption with the prelude to his opera*Lohengrin*. Here, according to Wagner, one hears the “miraculous descent of the Grail, escorted by a host of angels.” In shimmering lines and soaring harmonies, a music unfolds that Friedrich Nietzsche compared to a drug-induced trance, “blue, with an opiate-like, narcotic effect.”

Rimsky-Korsakov’sScheherazade concludesthe evening with a richly colorful narrative. The four-movement symphonic poem brings the fairy-tale world of*One Thousand and One Nights*to lifeinan opulent orchestration influenced by Wagner’s music dramas and infused with Slavic color. The solo violin embodies the wise Scheherazade, who, as the narrator, inspires the orchestra with each new chapter to create sparkling soundscapes—from stormy seas and lavish feasts to mysterious nights.