Schönberg / Strauss

“Then he takes her, heavy, in his arms, they breathe in kisses and are silent no more. The two walk, with them the clear night time,” Richard Dehmel writes in his poem, The Transfigured Night. It was this poem that became the subject of the eponymous string sextet by the father of dodecaphony and the shatterer of tonality Arnold Schoenberg. The sextet is still very much based on the lyricism and harmony of the late 19th century, but it is considerably more expressive than the works of his contemporaries, in tune with the spirit of the pre-war era. The Collegium Musicum under Paul Sacher premiered Richard Strauss's Metamorphoses Richard Strauss at the Tonhalle in Zurich a year after the end of World War II. The occupation of the German country by foreign forces was translated into music that includes the four bars of the funeral march from Beethoven's Eroica. Both the annotation In memoriam and the meaning of the work's title (transfiguration) can be variously understood in the context of its composition.

For over twenty years, the charismatic Ewald Danel has led the Slovak Chamber Orchestra, a body that has maintained the tradition of chamber music in Slovakia for many years.