At a Glance

R. STRAUSS
Metamorphosen 1945 | 26 mins
Richard Strauss began working in earnest on Metamorphosen (Metamorphoses) shortly after marking his 80th birthday in the summer of 1944. In this single movement of nearly a half-hour’s duration, twenty-three string instruments weave their independent strands into a dazzling tapestry, each thread being assigned (for the most part) to a single player. Though not despairing, it is a contemplative work, its slowly paced opening and closing sections embracing a central expanse that builds toward more energetic ecstasy. In the years immediately following its premiere, this piece became widely acknowledged as Strauss’s personal elegy for the destruction of his beloved Munich in the Second World War. A motif from the funeral march of Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony seems to inspire Strauss’s principal theme, but the composer’s intentions remain hidden, adding a layer of meaning (or ambiguity) to this late-in-life masterpiece. Read More —James M. Keller

WAGNER
Act I of Die Walküre 1856 | 60 mins
Die Walküre (The Valkyrie) is the second part of Richard Wagner’s massive operatic tetralogy Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung), where it is preceded by Das Rheingold and followed by Siegfried and Götterdämmerung. Based on Germanic-Nordic legends, it tells a complicated multi-generational tale involving the balance of power among gods, demigods, and mortals. The first of the three acts of Die Walküre focuses on the flowering of an incestuous love affair between Siegmund (tenor) and Sieglinde (soprano), the latter drugging her malevolent husband, Hunding (bass), to provide the opportunity for them to act on their passion. Ring aficionados may notice musical motifs that surface elsewhere in the cycle, binding the plot of this segment to the larger story. Read More—J.M.K.