TO THE MEMORY OF THE ANGEL

ALBAN BERG Violin ConcertO “To the memory of the angel”
RICHARD STRAUSS Ein Heldenleben Op. 40

Christian Altenburger violin
Filharmonie Brno
conductor Dennis Russell Davies

In memory of the angel
In the triumvirate of representatives of the so-called Second Viennese School, Arnold Schönberg – Anton Webern – Alban Berg, the latter was considered the most romantic and lyrical composer of the three. This is fully confirmed by his Violin Concerto, written in 1935. Alban Berg (1885-1935) composed it under the impression of the death of his beloved Manon, daughter of Alma Mahler and the architect Walter Gropius, and titled it To the Memory of an Angel. He himself did not survive his “angel” for long: he died on Christmas Eve of the same year without having heard his last completed work.

Ein Heldenleben
Among the symphonic poems of Richard Strauss (1864-1949), his fortieth opus, Ein Heldenleben (The Life of a Hero), completed in December 1898, occupies a very special position. Not only is it designed for the largest orchestral apparatus Strauss had used up to that time (he greatly strengthened the woodwind and brass sections and employed two harps), but it represents, above all, the culmination of the composer’s tendency to project himself into his own works. While Strauss had used the characters of Enspiegel, Don Juan or Macbeth in his previous symphonic poems to do this, and had partly projected his own personality into their musical images, in The Life of the Hero he no longer hid behind anyone and created “a pompous soundscape of an epoch intoxicated by its own actions, in the centre of which he placed the creative artist, embodied by his own self”, as Ernst Krause wrote in his monograph on the composer. The premiere took place in 1899 in Frankfurt am Main by the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra conducted by Willem Mengelberg.

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You can buy the concert on its own or as part of the “CREATE YOUR OWN” season subscription from 9 June 2025 (8am) when non-renewed subscriptions are released.

The concert can be purchased as a part of the SUBSCRIPTION (Filharmonie in the Theatre I) ONLINE from 29 April and at the Ticket Office of Filharmonie Brno since 12 May 2025.

SUBSCRIOPTION RENEWAL is possible immediately when confirmed by email about the reservation in the 70th season.