Program
Pyotr Tchaikovsky
Serenade for Strings in C major, Op. 48 (1880)
Richard Strauss
Metamorphosen, study for 23 solo strings TrV 290, AV 142 (1945)
Samuel Barber
Adagio for Strings (1936)
musicAeterna orchestra
Conductor Teodor Currentzis
Details
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky wrote his Serenade for String Orchestra in the autumn of 1880 at the peak of his creative form, after the composition of the Symphony No. 4 and the operas “Eugene Onegin” and “Swan Lake”. At the time, the composer was particularly zealously studying Mozart’s legacy and his hobby could have turned into a monograph, but it resulted in the Serenade for String Orchestra. The composition was conceived as a sinfonietta, but it was called a serenade in keeping with the 18th century genre system. Tchaikovsky wrote to his patroness Nadezhda von Meck about “A Piece in the form of a Sonatina” opening his Serenade: “In the first movement I paid tribute to my worship of Mozart; this is an intentional imitation of his manner, and I would be happy if they found that I was not too far from the sample taken.” Far from being fond of direct stylizations, in the third part of the Serenade Tchaikovsky included a theme that ten years later would sound in the most dramatic picture of the opera “The Queen of Spades” – in the bedroom of a dying Countess. The finale of the composition is based on two Russian folk songs. The captivating freshness, clarity of thought and subtlety of orchestral writing have turned the Serenade for String Orchestra into one of the most performed works of the world symphonic repertoire.
Richard Strauss was composing the symphonic study Metamorphosen in the last months of World War II and finished it in April 1945. This work has become one of Strauss’ later masterpieces. The shock of the Dresden and Munich bombing turned into an elegy in memory of a destroyed culture. In this work, there appear Richard Wagner’s Tristan motif, some hints of Mozart’s and Bach’s motifs, a range of self-references. In the finale Strauss directly quotes the Funeral March from Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 and supplies the theme with a note in the score: In memoriam. These are the “Metamorphoses” intertwining the intonations of sorrow with the motives of hope and enlightenment.
Adagio for Strings is one of the most renowned compositions by Samuel Barber, the American classic of the 20th century. This is an adaptation of the second movement of his String Quartet No. 1, Op. 11, for chamber orchestra. Written in the summer of 1936 in Europe and inspired by Virgil’s The Georgics, the quartet was intended primarily for a close circle of the young composer’s friends. In the winter of 1938, Barber made an orchestral version of the second, slow paced movement of the quartet and sent the score to conductor Arturo Toscanini: the premiere took place in November of the same year and was broadcast on the radio. This historic recording of 1938 was heard all over the world. The Adagio for Strings, filled with restrained sorrow and leading to catharsis, is often performed as a non-confessional requiem.