Hi, kids! Today, we are going to continue moving our bodies to the music! Let’s talk about Johann Strauss, Sr.’s Radetzky March. THE CHALLENGE: Let’s see how we can use our bodies make rhythms! Let the music guide you through the marching challenge. Imagine you are a soldier or marching band musician on parade! March … Continued
On November 29, 30, and December 1, the Houston Symphony celebrates Thanksgiving with A Musical Feast: All-Strauss Thanksgiving, a program featuring four of Richard Strauss’s greatest masterpieces. In this post, discover Strauss’s Four Last Songs, perhaps the most beautiful music ever written. In 1946, Strauss was reading the works by Joseph von Eichendorff (an early 19th century … Continued
On November 29, 30, and December 1, the Houston Symphony celebrates Thanksgiving with A Musical Feast: All-Strauss Thanksgiving, a program featuring four of Richard Strauss’s greatest masterpieces. In this post, discover Strauss’s Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks, a lively comic work about the conflict between stern forces of repression and the irrepressible spirit of freedom. The legend of … Continued
On November 29, 30, and December 1, the Houston Symphony celebrates Thanksgiving with A Musical Feast: All-Strauss Thanksgiving, a program featuring four of Richard Strauss’s greatest masterpieces. In this post, discover Strauss’s Don Juan, a swashbuckling romp that scandalized Strauss’s contemporaries with its shocking eroticism and ultra-modern musical style. Richard Strauss was a musically precocious child who … Continued
On November 29, 30, and December 1, the Houston Symphony celebrates Thanksgiving with A Musical Feast: All-Strauss Thanksgiving, a program featuring four of Richard Strauss’s greatest masterpieces. In this post, discover Strauss’s Death and Transfiguration, a powerful tone poem that explores the ultimate mystery of what lies beyond earthly existence. Over the course of the … Continued
This Thanksgiving weekend, Music Director Andrés Orozco-Estrada leads an all-Strauss program that showcases the virtuoso abilities of our fabulous musicians. Joining Andrés and the orchestra is world-renowned Swedish soprano Miah Persson, who sings Strauss’s Four Last Songs, the composer’s gorgeous final masterpiece. Get to know this golden-voiced artist as she discusses Strauss, new music, Texas, … Continued
On November 2, 3 and 4, the Houston Symphony welcomes renowned conductor Bramwell Tovey back to Jones Hall for The Seven Deadly Sins, a playfully provocative program of works by Strauss, Scriabin and Weill. Learn more about Salome’s Dance (also known as The Dance of the Seven Veils) from Strauss’s scandalous opera Salome in this post. One … Continued
This November, the Houston Symphony is mixing things up with The Seven Deadly Sins, a playfully provocative program put together by acclaimed guest conductor Bramwell Tovey. “Weill’s Seven Deadly Sins with Storm Large was our starting point,” Tovey explained. “Kurt Weill was a German-Jewish refugee who escaped the Nazis and eventually became a U.S. citizen. … Continued
Houston, home to NASA has become a stellar part of pop culture related to outer space. For instance, the famous phrase “Houston, we have a problem” was made popular in the 1995 film Apollo 13, which depicted the true events of the Apollo 13 space mission. It is fitting that the Houston Symphony presents the … Continued
Above: From left to right, Matthew Strauss (percussion), Mark Griffith (percussion), Marian Beauchamp, Gary Beauchamp and Brian Del Signore (principal percussion) pose with the new low E bell that will be played during this weekend’s concerts. At this weekend’s performances of Richard Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra, a new sound will ring out through Jones Hall. … Continued
According to his novelist friend Romain Rolland, Richard Strauss once quipped that “In music one can say everything. People won’t understand you.” Strauss’ characteristically humorous remark seems particularly applicable to Also sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spake Zarathustra), one of his best known yet most misunderstood works. Ever since Stanley Kubrick used it to score a cosmic … Continued