Discovering Masterpieces - Strauss

Semperoper, Dresden. Watch the series 'Discovering Masterpieces'! Your audio-visual concert guides to the great masterpieces of classical music. The series brings you 20 half-hour documentaries on 20 classical masterpieces: acclaimed experts, famous soloists and outstanding conductors take you on a journey back to the time and place of composition. In today's documentary, we present Richard Strauss's 'Eine Alpensinfonie'. This 'Alpine Symphony' is one of Strauss' largest works outside of his operas. He considered it his best-wrought work in terms of its orchestration. Although it is a symphony in title, it is not a symphony in the generally accepted sense of the word: rather it is a 'tone poem', a musical form which Strauss specialised in for about 20 years of his life. The German author and Strauss specialist Habakuk Traber explains the concept of the work and the story behind: a story of a human life, with its jollity, its fear, its glory, beginning and ending in darkness.