Teatro Nacional De São Carlos

Conductor Markus Stenz

Portuguese Symphony Orchestra

Co-presentation
TNSC | CCB

JOSEPH HAYDN
Symphony nbr104 in D major (Hob. I:104)

RICHARD STRAUSS
Eine Alpensinfonie, op.64 (An Alpine Symphony)

Richard Strauss started An Alpine Symphony composition opus 64 in 1911 while he waited for a more definite libretto of Hofmannsthal from the one that would be his opera The Woman Without a Shadow. The orchestra is truly gigantic, having besides the many wood instruments, 8 tubes, 4 trumpets, 4 trombones, 6 tubas, 6 timbales, organ and one section of strings big enough  to support this major quantity of metals and percussion. The music, like other symphonic poems written by Strauss until the mid-twentieth century is made through a program accurately described in 22 small numbers that divide the piece: a journey through the Bavarian Alps from sunrise to sunset and were you can live a one day adventure with streams, waterfalls, mist, meditation, storms and visions on the top of the mountain. In the sound and brilliant writting of the piece we can foresee a felted pantheismm in some passages, bringing a healthy breathing to the metalic gradiosity of orchestral tuttis where keenly you can hear an army of horns and trumpets! An absolutly germanic music, An Alpine Symphony gives us a feeling of grandiosity that is undoubtedly connected to the monumental vision of the mountains that form the european Alps where the composer lived most of his life.

Text, Nuno Côrte-Real