Digital Programmes
Gewandhausorchester Leipzig: The Strauss Project Part II
Start time: 7.30pm
Approximate running time: 100 mins including a 20-minute interval
Please note all timings are approximate and subject to change
Performing three of Strauss’s enduring masterpieces, the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig close their two-concert residency with a bang.
The year 1885 was a pivotal one for the 21-year-old Richard Strauss. He first met violinist and composer Alexander Ritter, who encouraged him to explore the pioneering music of Wagner and Liszt. By the end of the year, following the surprise departure of eminent conductor Hans von Bülow, Strauss found himself at the helm (temporarily) of one of Germany’s finest musical ensembles, the Meiningen Court Orchestra.
It was also the year in which he travelled to Frankfurt with his mentor von Bülow to experience Paul Heyse’s drama Don Juans Ende. The play about the notorious Spanish womaniser no doubt struck a chord. Around the same time, Strauss was involved in a tempestuous affair with a married woman, and in 1887 he first met the woman with whom he’d spend the rest of his life – soprano Pauline de Ahna, who became Strauss’s wife in 1894.
In the end, however, it wasn’t from Heyse’s play but from an 1844 verse drama by Austrian poet Nikolaus Lenau that Strauss took direct inspiration for his tone poem Don Juan. He began it in 1888, fired with enthusiasm – following Ritter’s encouragements – for a new, liberating way of composing, one inspired by literature or even philosophy, and one that revelled in vivid storytelling. Indeed, the audience at Don Juan’s 1889 Weimar premiere were scandalised by the graphic nature of Strauss’s musical depiction of the infamous libertine. It leaves little to the imagination, and it catapulted the composer to international fame.
The Don himself rushes onto the stage in the hope of sexual conquest in the dashing opening theme, and we later encounter one of the many objects of his desire in a tender violin solo. A wild central development section depicts a masked ball from Lenau’s play, though it sounds more like an orgiastic free-for-all. Strauss ends his piece more solemnly, however: Don Juan fights Don Pedro, son of a man he killed in a duel, but exhausted by his unquenchable desires, casts his sword aside and allows Don Pedro to run him through.
It was in 1885, too, that Strauss began his Burleske, though in many ways the piece looks back to his earlier music, created before Ritter encouraged his career-defining embrace of more pioneering ideas. Strauss later referred to this period as his ‘Brahmsschwärmerei’ (or ‘crush on Brahms’): though he was decidedly cool about the elder composer’s music later in his life, as a young man he was a passionate advocate, paying most overt tribute in his Burleske.
Strauss wrote the piece in the hope that von Bülow might be its soloist in Meiningen, but his mentor told him it was too unconventional, and virtually unplayable. Set aside for a few years, the Burleske was eventually premiered by (and dedicated to) Eugen d’Albert, a former pupil of Liszt. The composer never assigned it an opus number, and didn’t allow its publication until 1894. But he clearly retained an affection for the piece, even including it in what would be the final concert he conducted, at London’s Royal Albert Hall in 1947.
The Burleske opens – very unusually – with solo timpani, playing a figure that generates much of the single-movement work’s subsequent music. There’s plenty of Lisztian bravado to the piano’s exuberant first theme, though the soloist moves into slower, calmer music in the more overtly Brahmsian second theme. Both themes return after a stormy central development section, and Strauss makes a cheeky reference to Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde in his showy solo cadenza. In the end, though, the Burleske dissipates into thin air, and Strauss leaves the final word to (what else?) the timpani.
We jump forward just 11 years from 1885, to 1896, to discover an entirely transformed Strauss in tonight’s closing piece. Aged 32, he was already considered the leading German composer of his day, with a string of orchestral showpieces behind him that vividly conveyed the stories of Macbeth, Till Eulenspiegel and Don Juan (as we heard earlier). Now, however, he turned from storytelling to philosophy.
Written between 1883 and 1885, Also sprach Zarathustra (‘Thus spoke Zarathustra’) is Friedrich Nietzsche’s fictionalised reimagining of the life of the founder of Zoroastrianism: after years alone on a mountaintop, he descends to deliver his wisdom to humankind. Though Strauss was cagey about whether he’d really attempted to convey Nietzsche’s thorny philosophical musings on faith, nature and superhuman attainment in music, he nonetheless lifted several of the book’s chapter titles as headings for the sections of his work.
We begin with possibly the most famous opening in all music, indelibly associated with Kubrick’s 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Strauss’s ‘Sunrise’ depicts the glorious beginning to the day that Zarathustra will descend to impart his wisdom. It also introduces Strauss’s ‘world riddle’ motif, the grand, rising trumpet figure heard at the very start, which returns again and again to symbolise inscrutable nature.
A horn call representing humankind, answered by a hymn-like string passage, begins ‘Of the Backworldsmen’, Strauss’s depiction of our desire for a spiritual world beyond our own, while nature reasserts itself through the ‘world riddle’ motif’s return in ‘Of the Great Yearning’. The swirling, tempestuous music in ‘Of Joys and Passions’ portrays the primal passions that Nietzsche argued humankind should embrace, while the pensive violin solo in ‘The Song of the Grave’ is a lament for the lost idealism of youth. Strauss transforms his ‘world riddle’ theme into an elaborate fugue in ‘Of Learning’, though ‘The Convalescent’, in which the ‘world riddle’ motif finally triumphs over humankind’s science, marks Zarathustra’s attainment of understanding following illness.
‘The Dance Song’ invites us into a world of glittering Viennese waltzes: it’s a section that disconcerted many early listeners, but perhaps points to humankind in harmony with nature (listen out for the ‘world riddle’ motif in its bassline). A midnight bell announces the final section, ‘Song of the Night Wanderer’, whose closing dissonance may indicate that Zarathustra’s – and humankind’s – ultimate riddle will forever remain unsolved.
© David Kettle
Start time: 7.30pm
Approximate running time: 100 mins including a 20-minute interval
Please note all timings are approximate and subject to change
Programme and performers
Richard Strauss Don Juan
Burleske
Also sprach Zarathustra
1. Sonnenaufgang (Sunrise)
2. Von den Hinterweltlern (Of the Backworldsmen)
3. Von der großen Sehnsucht (Of the Great Longing)
4. Von den Freuden und Leidenschaften (Of Joys and Passions)
5. Das Grablied (The Song of the Grave)
6. Von der Wissenschaft (Of Science and Learning)
7. Der Genesende (The Convalescent)
8. Das Tanzlied (The Dance Song)
9. Nachtwandlerlied (Song of the Night Wanderer)
Performers
Gewandhausorchester Leipzig
Andris Nelsons conductor
Rudolf Buchbinder piano
Artist biographies
The Gewandhausorchester is the oldest civic symphony orchestra in the world. The enterprise was founded in 1743 by a group of 16 musical philanthropists – representatives of the nobility as well as regular citizens – forming a concert society by the name of Das Große Concert. Many celebrated musicians have been appointed to the office of Gewandhauskapellmeister (Music Director and Principal Conductor), including Johann Adam Hiller, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Arthur Nikisch, Kurt Masur, Herbert Blomstedt, Riccardo Chailly. Andris Nelsons assumed the position of Gewandhauskapellmeister in the 2017/18 season.
The unique sound identity, along with the rich diversity of the repertoire which the Gewandhausorchester performs, is cultivated in over 200 performances each year in the Orchestra's three 'homes': as concert orchestra in the Gewandhaus, orchestra of the Leipzig Opera and orchestra for the weekly performances of the cantatas of Johann Sebastian Bach with the Thomanerchor in St Thomas's Church.
Few other ensembles have exerted such significant and enduring influence on the development of the symphonic music tradition. The orchestra performed a complete cycle of the symphonies of Beethoven during his lifetime (1825/26), as well as the first ever cycle of Bruckner's symphonies to be mounted (1919/20). Wagner's Prelude to Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Beethoven's 5th Piano Concerto, Brahms' Violin Concerto and Deutsches Requiem and Bruckner's 7th Symphony are just a fraction of the core symphonic repertoire to be given its first performance by the Gewandhausorchester.
The CD and DVD productions released by the Gewandhausorchester have been decorated with a plethora of international record awards, including a Golden Disc. On May 6 2022 Deutsche Grammophon releases the recording of Strauss’s major symphonic works by Nelsons, the Gewandhausorchester and the Boston Symphony Orchestra and star soloists Yo-Yo Ma and Yuja Wang.
Andris Nelsons is Music Director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Gewandhauskapellmeister of the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig. These two positions have firmly established Grammy Award-winning Nelsons as one of the most renowned and innovative conductors on the international scene.
Autumn 2019 marked a ground-breaking highlight for Nelsons, the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig: three performances featuring musicians from both institutions within one joint orchestra were given at Boston’s Symphony Hall as part of an alliance between the two orchestras that continues today.
Andris Nelsons has an exclusive recording relationship with Deutsche Grammophon, which has paved the way for three landmark projects with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig and the Wiener Philharmoniker. Nelsons and the Boston Symphony Orchestra partner on recordings of the complete Shostakovich symphonies and the opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District. Furthermore, Nelsons and the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig continue their critically acclaimed Bruckner symphonic cycle under the Yellow Label. Both cycles released their fifth instalments in 2021. Nelsons’ recordings of Beethoven’s complete symphonies with the Wiener Philharmoniker, in celebration of the composer’s 250th birthday, were released by Deutsche Grammophon in October 2019.
Born in Riga in 1978 into a family of musicians, Andris Nelsons began his career as a trumpeter in the Latvian National Opera Orchestra whilst studying conducting. He was Music Director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra from 2008–2015, Principal Conductor of the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie in Herford, Germany 2006–2009 and Music Director of the Latvian National Opera 2003–2007.
Rudolf Buchbinder is one of the legendary performers of our time, with a career spanning more than 60 years. Tradition and innovation, faithfulness and freedom, authenticity and open-mindedness merge in his reading of the great piano literature.
Buchbinder is an honorary member of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien, the Wiener Konzerthausgesellschaft, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and was the first soloist to be awarded the Golden Badge of Honour by the Staatskapelle Dresden.
His interpretations of the works of Ludwig van Beethoven in particular are regarded as setting standards. With the edition BUCHBINDER:BEETHOVEN, Deutsche Grammophon presents a complete recording of the 32 piano sonatas and five piano concertos. Buchbinder was the first pianist to play all of Beethoven's piano sonatas within one festival summer at the 2014 Salzburg Festival. His recordings of Beethoven's Complete Piano Concertos document a truly remarkable project. Staged as a series of concerts at the Vienna Musikverein, it was the first cycle of its kind in the hall’s 150-year history.
As a contribution to Beethoven's 250th anniversary in 2020, Rudolf Buchbinder initiated a cycle of new Diabelli Variations. In cooperation with eleven concert houses and festivals worldwide, and with the support of the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation, the new work was commissioned from eleven leading composers of our time. The project reflects Beethoven's work into the 21st century and underlines the universality of his language across all borders. Under the title The Diabelli Project, Deutsche Grammophon released the world premiere recording alongside a new reading of Beethoven's Diabelli Variations, which Buchbinder last recorded before in 1976. The double album marked the beginning of his exclusive partnership with Deutsche Grammophon.