Vier Letzte Lieder
Strauss’ Swan Song
In the last six months of World War II, Richard Strauss wrote one more important orchestral work: the melancholy Metamorphoses, a study for 23 solo strings. Calling it a “study” was an understatement: it is one of his most consummate compositions. It is generally seen as an elegiac lament on the devastation that the war in Germany had caused and was still causing at the time of the composition. One of the themes of the piece quotes precisely the death march from Beethoven’s third symphony, the Eroica. A few years later, the eighty-four-year-old Strauss wrote perhaps his most beloved composition, the Vier Letzte Lieder, literally his last songs and thus his swan song. He never got to hear them live: he died shortly after their completion in 1949. The songs radiate an atmosphere of leave-taking and resignation. The composer farewells life, and the world farewells a genre and a musical language that had definitively become “historical”. When Strauss was writing these pieces, atonal music was long out of its infancy, and in the second half of the twentieth century music would take a radically different direction. Artistic director Bart Schneemann will explain the works with the help of projected manuscripts. Both works are in outstanding new NBE arrangements.
COMPOSITION: VIER LETZTE LIEDER, METAMORPHOSEN, RICHARD STRAUSS
ARRANGEMENT: WILLEM VAN MERWIJK
when to see it
-
Thu 16 Apr 2020
20:30
Amsterdam
Podium Mozaïek
Tickets
try-out
- Fri 17 Apr 2020 20:00 Arnhem Musis Tickets
- Sat 18 Apr 2020 20:15 Den Haag Nieuwe Kerk Tickets
- Sun 19 Apr 2020 20:15 Amsterdam Het Concertgebouw
- Tue 21 Apr 2020 20:30 Tilburg Theaters Tilburg Tickets
- Wed 22 Apr 2020 20:00 Muiden Grote Kerk Tickets
- Thu 23 Apr 2020 20:00 Enschede Grote Kerk Tickets
- Sun 26 Apr 2020 16:00 Utrecht TivoliVredenburg Tickets
- Sat 25 Apr 2020 20:15 Amsterdam Het Concertgebouw
- Tue 28 Apr 2020 20:30 Leeuwarden de Harmonie Tickets
- Wed 29 Apr 2020 20:15 Meppel Schouwburg Ogterop Tickets
- Thu 30 Apr 2020 20:15 Wageningen Junushoff Tickets
PHIL 150 years
The NBE looks back and plays highlights from all the many concerts it has given at PHIL in Haarlem. Classical masterpieces and music from faraway.
Read more 08-09-2023International Day of Peace (Dag van de Vrede)
Back in 1981, the United Nations declared September 21st the International Day of Peace with the aim of a worldwide day of truce and non-violence..
Read more 20-09-2023 t/m 21-09-2023American Roots
Native American, Bluegrass banjo and Blues songs together with the NBE on stage. And of course music by Philip Glass. A programme in which America’s.
Read more 05-10-2023 t/m 10-03-2024Purcell goes celtic
At first sight, the 18th-century British genius Henry Purcell, composer of fragile, gentle Baroque music, does not seem able to fuse with Irish Celtic music..
Read more 09-11-2023 t/m 22-11-2023New Year’s Concert 2024
The Nederlands Wind Ensemble’s New Year’s concerts are as inseparable from New Year’s Day as ski jumping and the Viennese waltz. A surprising musical celebration,.
Read more 31-12-2023 t/m 01-01-2024Shostakovich+
Artistic director Bart Schneemann talks about one of his great passions: Shostakovich’s 8th string quartet. What is the story behind the notes, why is this.
Read more 25-01-2024 t/m 08-02-2024
More shows are loaded