Alexandre Kantorow plays Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4

Beethoven's Fourth in a question and answer program

'My next opera will be orchestrated for harps', said Richard Strauss after the premiere of his fifteenth opera Capriccio ; he retired. But he returned to it after the bombing of Dresden in '45 and wrote Metamorphoses for 23 strings, each with its own part, as an 'In Memoriam' for German music from bygone times. Strauss took the funeral march from Beethoven's Third Symphony as the starting point for his moving, very personal music.

Mozart and Allegri

Mozart wrote his Maurerische Trauermusik for the funeral of two fellow Freemasons. The music is sad, but also hopeful. Allegri's Miserere mei is a religious choral work in which – just like in the Metamorphoses – contrasting voices enter into a conversation with each other (counterpoint music). In this case, these are wind instruments, in an arrangement by Max Knigge. In short, the concert becomes a theatrical experience: from the contrapuntal question and answer of the wind instruments that stand in a circle around the audience in Allegri, to Orpheus' desperate question to Euridice in Beethoven.