Archived event
Featuring
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra
Fabien Gabel conductor
Daniel Müller-Schott cello
Program
R. Strauss Don Juan
R. Strauss Death and Transfiguration
Dvořák Cello Concerto
About this performance
French conductor Fabien Gabel leads the MSO through a program dedicated to the principal forces of nature: death and desire. Richard Strauss dealt directly with both themes, in his tone poems Don Juan and Death and Transfiguration.
- Strauss’ version of Don Juan seduces scores of women as he searches for femininity’s ideal. When he can’t find it, he wills death to come to him. The piece conjures all the swagger and mortification that this scenario suggests, with some magisterial parts for the horns and beautifully sensual woodwinds.
- Death and Transfiguration opens with a long, mournful largo evoking the sick artist, slowly fading, before plunging into a violent and clamorous battle between the forces of life and death. The transfiguration, when it comes, is a glorious and deeply moving release.
- To complete this grand meditation is Dvořák’s Cello Concerto, played by talented German cellist Daniel Müller-Schott. Dedicated in part to the composer’s dying sister-in-law, Dvořák’s Cello Concerto is a piece brimming with yearning and the tenderness that accompanies impending loss.
Duration: approx. 110 minutes including interval
