WAGNER Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde
STRAUSS Four Last Songs
STRAUSS Elektra – Orchestral Suite
This programme brings together three complementary perspectives on the expressive intensity of late Romanticism. In the Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde, Wagner distils the essence of the work that irrevocably changed the course of music history following its premiere in 1865. The celebrated “Tristan chord” opens a world of unresolved harmonic tension and insatiable longing that permeates the entire score, from its opening restlessness to Isolde’s final transfiguration, where the music blossoms into a radiant and liberating vision. Composed in 1948, Richard Strauss’s Four Last Songs stand as the composer’s artistic farewell. Setting poems by Hermann Hesse and Joseph von Eichendorff, Strauss creates a sound world of serenity and contemplation, in which the soprano voice is seamlessly interwoven with an orchestra of extraordinary colour and refinement. Far removed from operatic drama, these songs offer a profound meditation on the passage of time and the peaceful acceptance of mortality. The Elektra Orchestral Suite, heard at Ibermúsica for the first time, reveals Strauss at his most uncompromising. Drawn from the opera premiered in 1909, it condenses the overwhelming theatrical power and psychological intensity of a drama pushed to its limits. The immense forces of the orchestra, the unrelenting tension, and the explosive surges of energy make this score an experience of exceptional emotional and expressive power.
