MIKKO FRANCK
Richard Strauss 1864 -1949
Vier letzte Lieder
Final scene of Capriccio
Tod und Verklärung, opus 24
Elsa Dreisig, soprano
Orquestra de la Comunitat Valenciana
The Finn Mikko Franck, head of the Radio France
Philharmonic Orchestra, is one of the most acclaimed conductors of
our days. He has conducted the best orchestras, including the
Berlin Philharmonic, and is a regular at the Vienna Opera,
conducting works by Strauss and Wagner. And it is Strauss who is
the subject of his first concert at the Palau de les Arts. The
evening includes the final scene of the opera Capriccio,
and before that the composer's last work, the Vier Letzte
Lieder, a cycle of captivating expressive beauty and
overwhelming lyricism: songs to nature, love, life and death, given
voice here by the soprano Elsa Dreisig. The composer already had a
presentiment of his end, and in the tone poem Death and
Transfiguration evokes the theme of transfiguration written in his
youth, which presents death as a life lived to the fullest.