Beethoven · Strauss / Perahia · Mehta

Richard Strauss is said to have stated that he could set a glass of beer to music in a manner that one could tell whether it was export or pilsner; and many works prove the evocative power of his virtuosic mastery of the orchestra. In his Symphonia domestica, first performed in 1904, Strauss draws us into the tonal midst of his family life – between himself, his wife and their son, complete with garrulous relatives, squealing children and a fiery marital row. About 100 years earlier it was a different stroke of musical genius with which Ludwig van Beethoven stunned his audience at the premiere of his Fourth Piano Concerto: for the first time ever, a concerto wasn’t opened by the orchestral tutti but by a solo instrument. And Elliott Carter certainly knows how to captivate his audience: “Fantastic music,” the Boston Globe exclaimed after the debut of his Three Illusions in 2005, “surprising, inevitable, and vividly orchestrated.”