CARL MARIA von WEBER / arr. HECTOR BERLIOZ
Invitation to the Dance, Op. 65
JOHANNES BRAHMS / DETLEV GLANERT
Four Preludes and Serious Songs, Op. 121
RICHARD WAGNER
Prelude and Isolde’s Liebestod from Tristan and Isolde
RICHARD STRAUSS
Death and Transfiguration, tone poem, Op. 24
Krešimir Stražanac bass-baritone
Brno Philharmonic
conductor Alexander Liebreich
- Johannes Brahms’s last completed work, written after biblical texts and under the impact of a serious illness and ensuing decease of a person to whom the composer felt close – the pianist Clara Schumann • Orchestral arrangement by Detlev Glanert (like Brahms, a native of Hamburg) who also wrote the preludes in a Brahmsian spirit • The solo part performed by the celebrated Croatian bass-baritone, Krešimir Stražanac • Prelude from Wagner’s ground-breaking opera, Tristan and Isolde, an intense, lyrical meditation about the futility of love and unfulfilled desire, and Isolde’s Liebestod, or Love-Death, from the conclusion of the opera as its fatal denouement • A musical description of “the last hours of a man who had striven for the highest ideals” in Richard Strauss’s tone poem • Under the baton of Alexander Liebreich, who conducts regularly in Brno and has recently been appointed the chief conductor of the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra
