DEPTH. HEIGHT. DRAMA.

Whether Don Giovanni can be considered a superhuman figure is obviously debatable, though there were perhaps some among the women who fell victim to his seduction who thought of him that way. In Mozart’s opera, however, his fate is one of ruin, and he ends up in the depths of a sulfurous hell, where he is surrounded not only by eternal fire but also by extremely somber D-minor harmonies. The opera’s overture begins with these sounds, whose tone and drama are also characteristic of the Piano Concerto in D minor, one of the most passionate works in Mozart’s oeuvre. Richard Strauss’s monumental work Thus Spoke Zarathustra, a symphonic poem that brought revolutionary innovation at the end of the 19th century, is much more the music of light. This piece, which transforms Friedrich Nietzsche’s eponymous masterpiece—the philosophical novel that created the figure of the superman—into music, concludes with the sounds of union with the universe. Thus, throughout the concert, we journey from the depths to the heights, from darkness to light.

Presented by: Hungarian Radio Art Groups