“Nature As a Point of Departure”: Respighi’s Pines of Rome

Take an enchanted journey through the City of Seven Hills by joining the Houston Symphony and guest conductor Fabien Gabel on May 2, 4 & 5. These concerts will feature the first two installments of Ottorino Respighi’s beloved Roman Triptych, Fountains of Rome and Pines of Rome, plus the dazzling virtuosity of pianist Alexandra Dariescu, … Continued

Music Tells the Story: 5 Great Strauss Tone Poems

What Shakespeare was to the sonnet, Richard Strauss was the tone poem. Pioneered by Franz Liszt in the mid-1800s, tone poems took the then-groundbreaking step of tying music to an extra-musical source—usually, a poem, novel, painting, or landscape—allowing music to “tell the story.” In the tone poem Strauss found a perfect outlet for his compositional … Continued

Musical Pranks: Strauss’s Till Eulenspiegel

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

Insatiable: Strauss’s Don Juan

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

The Ultimate Mystery: Strauss’s Death and Transfiguration

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

Pleasure is the Law: Debussy’s La mer

On March 8, 9 and 10, the Houston Symphony presents a delectable all-French program featuring mezzo-soprano Susan Graham and Debussy’s La mer. In this post, discover how Debussy’s masterpiece revolutionized orchestral music. Get tickets and more information here. Revolutionaries are often brash, noisy characters, iconoclasts intent on shattering traditions; Debussy, however, was a quiet revolutionary. Rather than … Continued

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