Declaring Night
Moonlight. A couple is taking a walk. The woman is expecting a child. But not by her partner. Around 1900, that was enough to cause a scandal. The poem "Verklärte Nacht" by Richard Dehmel aroused tempers, Arnold Schoenberg turned it into music. And he transferred the stylistic devices of program music to chamber music: a kind of symphonic poem in reduced instrumentation, composed in the style of the late Romantic Wagnerian succession. Richard Strauss's Sextet also conveys a kind of love message. At the beginning of the opera Capriccio, the composer woos the Countess, who is listening with rapt attention. Undoubtedly, the composer was seeking proximity here to the romantic tone of Johannes Brahms. His masterful Sextet op. 18, with its optimistic, cheerful basic attitude, had great success from the beginning. The young Amaryllis Quartet already opened up new listening worlds for Museum audiences in September 2016; now the musicians return with two top-class musical partners.
Link to the Alte Oper: http://www.alteoper.en
Text source and more information about this event: https://www.alteoper.de/de/programm/veranstaltung.php?id=518142096
