'Death & Transfiguration' is a mesmerising tone poem about an artist on his deathbed reflecting on his life.
The young Richard Strauss Photo: Public domain via Wikimedia Commons
'Tod und Verklärung' (Death and Transfiguration) was written when Strauss was just 24 years old. So while it is not autobiographical, it does appear to echo the young Strauss finding his way as an artist.
In an 1894 letter, Strauss explains that the idea was to write a piece depicting an artist in his final hours, lying on his deathbed. In between episodes of body-racking pain, the artist remembers flashes of his childhood, and catches a glimpse of “the fruit of his life’s path, the conception, the ideal which he has sought to realise, to present artistically, but which he has not been able to complete.”
At last the artist dies, at which point his soul ascends, “in order to find gloriously achieved … those things which could not be fulfilled here below.”
Recorded 6 September 2019, Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington by RNZ Concert
Producer: David McCaw
Engineer: Darryl Stack
