Composer

Salome, the teenage princess of Judea, becomes dangerously fixated on the imprisoned prophet John the Baptist. When he rejects her advances, her desire curdles into obsession. At her stepfather Herod’s birthday feast, Salome dances and, at her maniacal mother’s behest, demands a gruesome reward. Set to Richard Strauss’s lush score, Salome is a fever dream of lust, power, and prophecy, where every glance is loaded and no desire is without cost.

EPSG:4326

Salome

Cincinnati Music Hall

Sunday Matinee 05: Dalia Stasevska & Boris Giltburg

Great Festival House

Mahler Strauss Martinů Borodin

Gasteig HP8

The program for the gala concert in the Concert Hall has been carefully chosen. In Felix Mendelssohn’s overture The Hebrides, the orchestra and Kirill Petrenko enter a Nordic-colored world marked by mystery. Then follows Robert Schumann's highly romantic Piano Concerto with the Russian star pianist Polina Osetinskaya as soloist.

Léonie Sonnings Musikpris 2026

DR Koncerthuset

Season Finale: Strauss’ Metamorphosen with Gábor Takács-Nagy

Ordway Center for the Performing Arts

In her ESO debut, Harmony Zhu performs Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, a set of 24 variations that is bursting with energy and passion from the first note.

Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody

Winspear Centre

Beethoven's magnificent Septet was for a long time the composer's undisputed most popular work. Here, he reveals himself not as the titan he was stylized as in the 19th century, but as approachable, cheerful, and filled with an unbridled joy of making music. A feast of a completely different kind is the arrangement of Richard Strauss's Till Eulenspiegel : a sparkling piece of musical humor.

4. Chamber Concert: Favorite Pieces

Kokerei Hansa

In a brutal world where revenge is enacted with the axe, Klytämnestra has murdered her husband Agamemnon. Their daughter Elektra is consumed by her grief and is fixated on vengeance against her mother. Justice must be served.

San Francisco Opera’s production, praised by the San Francisco Chronicle as “extraordinary” and “stunning,” brings us to a modern-day museum and an exhibit on Elektra. A young woman grappling with her own life is pulled into the ancient narrative in this ingenious production by Keith Warner—a taut psychological thriller in which the past and the present become one.

Music Director Eun Sun Kim conducts Richard Strauss’ expressionist masterpiece, replete with one of the largest orchestras in the repertoire. The intense emotions of this Greek tragedy are rendered on a vast scale by Strauss’ massive soundscape and a score that winds up the dramatic tension with an intensity that can only lead to one horrific outcome.

Elektra

War Memorial Opera House

The Apollo Orchestra with principal Conductor David Chan welcomes Susanna Phillips, soprano, as our featured soloist in Strauss’s Four Last Songs.

New World

Montgomery College Catherine F. Scott Commons

A season finale of bold contrasts and artistic innovation, The Rite of Spring On-Screen brings music, film, and dance together in a dynamic conclusion. The program opens with Strauss’ Death and Transfiguration, a profound depiction of life’s final journey. We welcome back Curtis Stewart, the 2025\2026 Joyce C. Willis Artist in Residence to perform The Famous People, his reimagination of Dvorák’s Slavonic Dances through African American musical traditions, creating a bold fusion of styles.

HSO Masterworks Series: The Rite of Spring On-Screen

Maxwell M. & Ruth R. Belding Theater

Join us for a season finale of bold contrasts and artistic innovation at Dvorák & Firebird, a celebration of sound and emotion that transcends time and culture. The program opens with Strauss’s Death and Transfiguration, a profound depiction of life’s final journey. We welcome back Curtis Stewart, the 2025/2026 Joyce C. Willis Artist in Residence, presenting a juxtaposition of his work The Famous People with Dvorák ‘s Slavonic Dances. Experience a unique interplay as the orchestra performs three original movements from Slavonic Dances, each followed by Stewart’s imaginative recompositions, creating a dynamic dialogue between Dvorák’s timeless melodies and Stewart’s contemporary interpretations. Marvel at Stewart’s virtuosic artistry as he performs Sarasate’s dazzling violin showpiece Zigeunerweisen.

Dvorák & Firebird

The Bushnell

Stories of tragic love unfold through the expressive power of the orchestra. Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde conveys the tender weight of grief with exquisite harmonies, and Tchaikovsky recounts forbidden lovers from Dante’s Inferno who are eternally tossed in the wind. The highs and lows of a bittersweet romance are on display in scenes from Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier.

Wagner, Tchaikovsky, and Strauss

Detroit Symphony Orchestra

The Philharmonia’s 80th birthday celebrations reach their grand finale – a recreation of a 1947 concert originally conducted by Richard Strauss himself.  

Strauss was 83, and the Philharmonia just two years old, when he conducted the orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall in a concert of his own works. Santtu, an acclaimed interpreter of Strauss’s music, now steps into his formidable shoes to recreate that extraordinary occasion.  

Don Juan gets the concert off to a swashbuckling start. A gorgeous oboe solo paints a sensuous love scene, before heroic horns herald the libertine’s final duel.   

Santtu conducts a Strauss extravaganza  Royal Festival Hall

Southbank Centre

The grand finale of the Philharmonia's 80th birthday celebrations is a complete reconstruction of a celebrated concert from 1947, when the 83-year old Richard Strauss conducted the then recently formed orchestra in pieces that he particularly loved.

Philharmonia Orchestra

The Anvil

The Philharmonia’s 80th birthday celebrations reach their grand finale – a reconstruction of a 1947 concert conducted by Richard Strauss himself.  

Strauss was 83, and the Philharmonia just two years old, when he conducted the orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall in a concert of his own works. Santtu, an acclaimed interpreter of Strauss’s music, now steps into his formidable shoes to recreate that extraordinary occasion.  

Don Juan gets the concert off to a swashbuckling start. A gorgeous oboe solo paints a sensuous love scene, before heroic horns herald the libertine’s final duel.   

Basingstoke: Santtu and Benjamin Grosvenor in a Strauss extravaganza

Leicester: Santtu and Benjamin Grosvenor in a Strauss extravaganza

De Montfort Hall

Chrisjovan Masso, tuba

Northwestern Bienen School of Music

Richard Strauss’ tone poems are arguably among some of the most richly orchestrated and strikingly adventurous pieces written for orchestra. Ein Heldenleben (A Hero’s Life) is no exception as it closely follows the composer’s own real-life conflicts, resolutions, and romances along the way through its bold battle music, soaring melodies, and passionate spirit.

Sierra and Strauss

Walt Disney Concert Hall

Claire Metcalf, violin

Callan Shanahan, soprano

“Here is enshrined the soul of…” This mysterious note, scribbled by Elgar opposite the title page of his Violin Concerto, sets the tone for an unforgettable end to the Season. Journey from the deeply introspective beauty of Elgar’s concerto to the playful charm of Vaughan Williams’s Wasps Overture and the sweeping grandeur of Strauss’s Viennese gem Der Rosenkavalier. This concert is a celebration of life’s full emotional spectrum – joy, sorrow, love and everything in between.

Soul Music

Belfast

“Here is enshrined the soul of…” This mysterious note, scribbled by Elgar opposite the title page of his Violin Concerto, sets the tone for an unforgettable end to the Season. Journey from the deeply introspective beauty of Elgar’s concerto to the playful charm of Vaughan Williams’s Wasps Overture and the sweeping grandeur of Strauss’s Viennese gem Der Rosenkavalier. This concert is a celebration of life’s full emotional spectrum - joy, sorrow, love and everything in between.

Ulster Orchestra: Soul Music

Waterfront Hall

Der Rosenkavalier weaves opulent, bittersweet waltzes with lush late-Romantic orchestration, evoking both nostalgic elegance and the ache of time passing. Strauss’s co-creator, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, wrote of a world of ceremony and lavish ritual, in which the characters are helplessly entangled.

This is the much-anticipated return of Bruno Ravella and Gary McCann’s stylish and opulent 2021 production, which had to be performed to a limited audience after lockdown. Making their Garsington debuts are conductor Finnegan Downie Dear, Matilda Sterby, Andreas Bauer Kanabas and Niamh O’Sullivan, whose Octavian at Théâtre des Champs-Élysées received great acclaim. We are also delighted to welcome back Soraya Mafi as Sophie and Robert Murray as Valzacchi.

Der Rosenkavalier

Wormsley

Yo-Yo Ma “is a musician of immense conscience, a wholeheartedly earnest presence who tends to bring out the best in whatever company he is in” (The New York Times). Sharing the stage with Gustavo Dudamel, Ma brings his sensitive playing to the world-premiere performances of an underwater field recordings-inspired concerto by Puerto Rican composer Angélica Negrón. The collaboration between Negrón and Ma sparked from an experiential creative workshop she facilitated with Ma and the Billion Oyster Project in New York City.

Gustavo Dudamel & Yo-Yo Ma

Brahms’ First Piano Concerto awes with its grand scale, intense passion and unabashedly dramatic piano writing — the ideal showcase for Martin Helmchen, “who brings both freshness and expressive depth to everything he plays” (Chicago Classical Review). Works by Ravel and Richard Strauss evoke the romance and intrigues of Vienna’s bygone golden age.

Brahms, Strauss & Ravel La valse

Chicago Symphony Orchestra

Mariotti. Visioni d’addio

Teatro dell'Opera di Roma

Jungha Kim, violin

In recognition of the 50th anniversary of the death of Benjamin Britten in 1976, we open with arguably his best-loved orchestral work, the “Four Sea Interludes” from his opera Peter Grimes. This will be followed by Richard Strauss’s finest and final vocal composition, his Four Last Songs, performed tonight by one of the world’s greatest Strauss interpreters, British soprano Elizabeth Watts. Elizabeth is a former BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist and is much in demand across the world; we are delighted to welcome her back to the Festival.

Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra

St Nicolas Church

Pre-College Orchestra Conducted by Adam Glaser | Beyond the Stars: Music of Film and Imagination

The Juilliard School

Fizz / Tifu

San Carlo Theatre

Our season ends with two of the most spectacular and orchestrally overwhelming scores from the late romantic period: Richard Strauss’s epic tone-poem Also sprach Zarathustra, inspired by Nietzsche’s account of the deep meditations of the half- mythical Persian hermit-philosopher Zoroaster; and Bartók’s dramatic fantasy Bluebeard’s Castle, based on the ancient fairy-tale about a young woman who marries a mysterious aristocrat and discovers that he has terrible secrets kept behind locked doors.

Also sprach Zarathustra & Bluebeard's Castle

Jacobs Music Center

Richard Strauss’s almost overwhelmingly beautiful Four Last Songs for soprano and orchestra were the German composer’s final works. Running through each lavishly scored song is an autumnal warmth and the sense of acceptance in the face of death.

London Symphony Orchestra/Sir Simon Rattle

Barbican Centre

Richard Strauss could shock when he wanted to, and he did so to the fullest with the one-act Salome . In the opera, the young princess Salome asks for the head of John the Baptist on a silver platter, to music that is both seductive and disgusting. To get her way, she must dance the Dance of the Seven Veils for her stepfather, King Herod.

Hasan, Strauss & Mozart

Discover the music of Strauss and Stenhammar together with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, conductor Magnus Fryklund, and ciceron Gregor Zubicky! The concert begins with Strauss’s tone poem Don Juan, based on a play about the promiscuous charmer who ultimately pays for his dishonest life. Music based on theater is also Stenhammar’s music for August Strindberg’s A Dream Play, which captures the expressionist and dreamlike atmosphere of the play.

Discover Strauss & Stenhammar

Berwaldhallen

Gastkonzert in Baden-Baden

Festspielhaus Baden-Baden

A stellar soloist ensemble shines in our concert-version Rosenkavalier – because Strauss’s opera is a festival of singing! Julia Kleiter is an internationally sought-after soprano, audiences cheered her Marschallin at the Wiener Staatsoper and the Lindenoper Berlin. Canadian mezzo-soprano Emily D’Angelo became the first female singer to win all four major prizes at the Operalia Competition, and her career is now taking off at the Met, in Vienna, Munich, Paris, and Covent Garden. The icing on the cake: Jonathan Tetelman in the brief but feared part of the Italian singer. Singing at its finest!

Richard Strauss: Der Rosenkavalier

The Corvallis-OSU Symphony Orchestra is the oldest continuously operating orchestra in the state of Oregon. From its inception in 1906 as a collegiate orchestra composed of nine members, the symphony has grown into a full symphonic orchestra performing 3 major classical concerts, a holiday concert, and a children’s concert each season. Professional musicians from throughout the Willamette Valley are joined by talented community members, OSU faculty, and OSU students representing a wide span of majors across campus. Repertoire from recent seasons includes Strauss’ Alpine Symphony, Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, Ravel’s “Daphnis and Chloe,” and Brahms’ Fourth Symphony.

Corvallis-OSU Symphony Spring Concert

Oregon State University

Experience an unforgettable evening of music with the Allentown Symphony Orchestra on May 16 & 17, 2026, at Miller Symphony Hall! The program begins with an electrifying overture by Grazyna Bacewicz, the trailblazing Polish composer whose dynamic orchestral works are a feast for the senses. Next, renowned guest soloist Erik Ralske, principal horn of the Metropolitan Opera, will showcase his virtuosity in Strauss’s demanding and Romantic Horn Concerto No. 1. The night culminates in Mahler’s Symphony No. 1, “Titan,” a masterpiece bursting with youthful exuberance, introspection, and soaring melodies. Don’t miss this captivating concert—secure your tickets now!

Mahler’s Titan

Miller Symphony Hall

Bohemian Rhapsody:” 2026 Arts for a Better Tomorrow

Gateway High School

Beethoven's Violin Concerto is so popular with audiences today that it's perhaps surprising it hardly made an impact at its premiere. Opening with an almost jazz drum tap the expansively elegant opening movement makes way for a set of theme and variations, serene and beauteous, before a catchy and lively Rondo bursts into energy to round off the work, performed by the inimitable Veronika Eberle.

BBC NOW - Death and Transfiguration

Brangwyn Hall

When Claudio Flückiger lifts his horn, a world of sonic beauty and virtuosity opens up. As solo hornist in the Royal Danish Orchestra, he masters the instrument's warm, singable tone and its powerful expression – qualities that are indispensable in the music of Richard Strauss.


Flückiger, educated in Zurich and with a career that has taken him through the Opernhaus Zurich and the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester, has a particular love for Strauss's works. In fact, the composer's incidental music was one of the reasons he chose to become an opera hornist. Tonight he will appear as a soloist in Strauss's Horn Concerto No. 1, a work written with love and deep understanding of the instrument. Strauss dedicated the concerto to his father, Franz Strauss, one of the most famous horn players of the time, and chose to call the orchestral version the “Waldhornkonzert” – a reference to the French horn his father preferred to play.

The solo hornist of the Royal Chapel plays Strauss

Alsion Concert Hall

Kyungmin Yang, piano

There’s pathos and grandeur in equal measure in Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto, its slow movement one of the composer’s most achingly divine.

London Symphony Orchestra/Nathalie Stutzmann

5th Music Association Concert

Stefaniensaal

This program brings together extraordinary forces of pianists and singers in repertoire that explores love, longing and lyricism across styles and eras. Playful, virtuosic and at times deeply intimate, this concert places collaborative music-making at centre stage.

UQ Pianists and UQ Singers: Too Many Pianists, Just Enough Singers and a Few Strings

Zelman Cowen Building (51)

Margot Hall, soprano

Philipp M. Krenn, director of Schlaflos in the 2023/24 season, is staging Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s melancholy global success, in which the soaring waltz melodies are just as much historical fiction as the timeless portrait of society full of arrogance, calculated intrigues and complex amours. The celebrated Hungarian soprano Polina Pastirchak returns to Graz Opera as the Marschallin, and former ensemble member Tetiana Miyus as Sophie. At her side: audience favourite Wilfried Zelinka as Ochs von Lerchenau.

The Rosenkavalier

Oper Graz

In the early 1930s, for Richard Strauss — approaching 70 — it was an auspicious moment when Stefan Zweig, a renowned author known for his artful, profound novels and plays, proposed writing a new libretto. In a mutually inspiring collaboration, they created a truly “comic opera” based on a play by Ben Jonson from the Shakespeare period filled not only with striking characters, tempo, and wit, but profound reflection as well. “The opera is a perfect, but perhaps for the twenty-first century,” according to Strauss himself, who in a difficult, dark time created a work of creative compositional virtuosity and a relaxed sense of humor, a story of people longing for rest or who lose themselves in busyness. This will be director Jan Philipp Gloger’s debut and it will be Christian Thielemann’s first new production as general music director, a position once held by Strauss himself.

Die schweigsame Frau

Bebelplatz

The Marschallin spends a night with her young lover Octavian. In the morning, Baron Ochs auf Lerchenau disturbs the idyll and asks her to find a suitable bearer of the silver rose for his bride Sophie, the daughter of the rich Faninal.

Der Rosen­kavalier

Vienna State Opera

He asks the marshal for a suitable candidate to deliver a silver rose to his very young bride Sophie - daughter of the newly ennobled, rich Lord of Faninal. The Marschallin suggests Octavian. She reflects melancholically on the transience of life. With a »light heart and light hands«, she wants to let Octavian go one day..

The legendary Mexican composer Gabriela Ortiz writes music of terrific and visceral energy and notable melodic sweetness, and the San Diego Symphony Orchestra is thrilled to be taking part in these performances of her new cello concerto Dzonot, specially written for our very own Alisa Weilerstein. Ortiz is well-known not only for the deep connection to Latin American folk-music in her compositions, but also for her passionate concern for the vulnerable and fragile environment of our planet. In this concerto, she was inspired by the "cenotes", the vast and world-famous limestone sinkholes in Mexico, which are like underground worlds all their own, with their own rivers, lakes, and plant and animal life.

From the Depths to the Heights: Ein Heldenleben

The Symphony’s Season Finale explodes with Richard Strauss and his monumental storytelling. The Symphony’s powerful brass section is on display, from the composer’s Vienna Philharmonic Fanfare to the cinematic grandeur of his Alpine Symphony featuring 34 brass players. Amaryn Olmeda returns to Des Moines for Mendelssohn’s beautifully melodic Violin Concerto.

Season Finale: Courage – Alpine Symphony

Des Moines Civic Center

After a string of successful tone poems, An Alpine Symphony was Richard Strauss’s first such composition after nearly a dozen years of focusing on opera. Written for a massive orchestra that includes such rarities as the heckelphone, thunder sheets, a wind machine, and other unusual effects, this gloriously opulent masterpiece takes listeners through the ascent and descent of a mountain in the Alps, with meadows, streams, storms, and vistas along the way. Also on the program are Strauss’s Burleske for Piano and Orchestra, performed with Blair McMillen, and the vivacious Die Tageszeiten (Times of the Day), a setting of four nature poems by Joseph von Eichendorff. Hear this program at the Fisher Center just days before TŌN performs it at Carnegie Hall.

Strauss’s “Alpine Symphony”

Fisher Center at Bard

Guest Artist: Evelyn Fuentes, Alto Saxophone & 2025 Youth Concerto Competition Winner

Symphonic Dances

Miller Theater

Embark on a musical odyssey from earthly passions to cosmic wonder. Experience a thrilling ride through temptation, then sublime artistry as pianist Terrence Wilson takes center stage. The journey culminates with Strauss’ Also Sprach Zarathustra—famous from 2001: A Space Odyssey—in a mind-expanding orchestral showcase.

Grand Epic

Warren Atherton Auditorium

Julian Schwarz is featured in Jennifer Higdon’s Cello Concerto, commissioned by Robert and Vicki Lieberman. We finish with the operatic music of Strauss’ Des Rosenklavier Suite. Gerard Schwarz conducts this season finale celebration concert.

Grand Finale Masterworks

The Oncenter Civic Center Theaters

Sol Gabetta returns to Antwerp, following her stunning performance of Lalo’s concerto last season, this time captivating audiences with Elgar’s Cello Concerto. Heralded by Gramophone as ‘one of the best around’, Gabetta’s performance is a masterclass in balancing stillness and glorification, imbuing the piece with profound emotion. Maestro Mikko Franck, renowned for his mastery of orchestral timbres, leads the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra through this poignant journey, culminating in Strauss’s majestic Tod und Verklärung. A concert not to be missed by lovers of deep musical expression.

Sol Gabetta shines with Elgar

Queen Elisabeth Hall

Music Center De Bijloke

Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony overflows with grateful enjoyment of nature. The symphony is a deeply personal depiction of what made Beethoven happiest: lonely walks through rural landscapes, small babbling brooks and mighty thunderstorms. It is uncomplicated and comes straight from the heart.

Beethoven 6

Aarhus Music Hall

Xinyi Liu, soprano

A string of Strauss' best songs, set to voice by Miah Persson – combined with Beethoven's nature-enjoying Pastorale symphony and the overture to Tannhäuser: The very best from the classical world.
Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony overflows with grateful enjoyment of nature. The symphony is a deeply personal depiction of what made Beethoven happiest: lonely walks through rural landscapes, small babbling brooks and mighty thunderstorms. It is uncomplicated and comes straight from the heart.

Keitaku Iwata, violin

Chamber Concert 8 »Sounds of Romanticism«

Sofia La Rosa, Junior Major Recital, voice

560 Music Center

Ryan Ha, oboe

Salome lives at the decadent court of her mother Herodias and her stepfather Herod, surrounded by intrigue and moral decay. She projects her sensual and erotic desires onto the imprisoned, ascetic prophet Jochanaan – but when he rejects her in disgust, her obsession escalates to monstrous proportions. She demands Jochanaan's head from Herod on a silver platter, thereby sealing her own downfall...

Globe Coburg

Since becoming Music Director of the Elgin Symphony Orchestra in 2023, Chad Goodman has been praised for taking the orchestra to new artistic heights and dramatically expanding its impact in the community. In his first two seasons he led the ESO premieres of more than a dozen works, increased community engagement through run-out concerts and engaging presentations in Elgin and neighboring cities, and spearheaded the orchestra’s first ever Día de los Muertos concert, uniting the symphony with folkloric dance and vocals in a city-wide cultural celebration.

Pictures at an Exhibition

Hemmens Auditorium

Violin virtuoso Andrew Sords returns for his third performance with the MSO, showcasing Richard Strauss’s vibrant and youthful “Violin Concerto in D Minor.” Composed when Strauss was only 17, the Concerto is a captivating showcase of late-Romantic virtuosity and artistic promise. The concert opens with Leopold Stokowski’s dramatic orchestral arrangement of J.S. Bach’s “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor,” made famous by Disney’s Fantasia. Inspired by the ruins of Holyrood Chapel in Edinburgh, Felix Mendelssohn’s “Symphony No. 3 in A Minor” brings the program and MSO’s season to a close.

German Masters With Andrew Sords, violin

Hylton Performing Arts Center

The works on this program are the quintessence of Romantic-era expression, with a focus on themes of individualism and emotionalism, and a lush, hyper-dramatic musical vocabulary. The performance begins with the Prelude from Wagner’s opera Tristan und Isolde and depicts the passions and frustration of the doomed lovers.

Radiant Romance

Florida State University

First appearing with the MSO in 2011, violin virtuoso Andrew Sords returns to Merchant Hall for his third performance, this time showcasing Richard Strauss’s vibrant and youthful Violin Concerto in D Minor. Composed when Strauss was only 17, the concerto may be less frequently performed than his later tone poems and operas, but it remains a captivating showcase of late-Romantic virtuosity and artistic promise.

The concert opens with Leopold Stokowski’s dramatic orchestral arrangement of J. S. Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor, made famous by Disney’s Fantasia. Inspired by a walking tour through the ruins of Holyrood Chapel in Edinburgh, Felix Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 3 in A Minor (“Scottish”) brings the program — and the MSO’s season — to an exuberant close.

German Masters

The ascetic prophet Jochanaan, who preaches repentance, seems to offer her an escape from this world. However, he rejects her longing. Full of immature anger, she demands his head. When Salome kisses the prophet's bloody mouth, her stepfather Herod orders her to be killed.

April’s concert programme in the Bethlehem Chapel includes a wide variety of musical works that will attract chamber music lovers and fans of instrumental concerts.  The first part of the concert will feature the Concerto for Bassoon and Chamber Orchestra by the French composer Jean-Michel Jolivet. This will be followed by the Concertino for Clarinet and Chamber Orchestra by the Italian composer Ferruccio Busoni, whose work is characterised by its delicate melodies and sophisticated instrumentation.

Robert Jindra presents

The Bethlehem Chapel

Themes of motherhood, loss, and joy emerge in a program that spans opera, Indigenous voices, and folk tradition, with song and spirit rising together like flame and tide.

Songs of River & Fire

Desautels Concert Hall

Kyle Cho, horn

Madeleine Zuckerman, soprano

Musicians from the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra serve a four-course meal of strings on a silver platter. We hear Strauss’ final opera, a string quartet by Nancy Dalberg and enthusiastic dialogues for viola and violin composed by Clarke and Mozart.

Soulful strings

Göteborgs Symfoniker

Alitalia was the name of Italy’s premier airline for 75 years. We borrow it here because all three composers on this program owed a creative debt to the culture and vibrancy of that wonderful country.

In a letter written to Sibelius in 1901, Baron Carpelan strongly encourages his fellow Finn to go abroad:  "You have been sitting at home for quite a while, Mr. Sibelius, it is high time for you to travel. You will spend the winter in Italy, a country where one learns cantabile, balance and harmony. You remember what Italy meant for Tchaikovsky’s development and for Richard Strauss."

The lure of Italy to those who live in cold Northern Europe cannot be understated. Composer after composer went south and brought back their musical memories of that country of sunshine and warmth, of folksong and dance, and of landscapes from seaside to mountain.

For Strauss it was about finding external inspiration like the story of Till Eulenspiegel; for Tchaikovsky, it was exposure to folk tunes he heard on the streets of Florence; and for Sibelius, it was where he jotted down the first ideas that would become his Second Symphony. All thanks to Italy…

Alitalia

Mount Saint Mary College

RPO: Space! 2026

Eastman Theatre

Symphony Orchestra's principal guest conductor Maxim Emelyanychev takes the podium and leads the orchestra initially in Salonen's symphonic poem Nyx inspired by the shadow like godess with the same name in Greek mythology. The South Korean pianist Yeol Eum Son then joins for Witold Lutosławski's Variations on a Theme by Paganini, based on Niccolò Paganini's famous Caprice No. 24 for solo violin, known for its virtuosic demands and catchy theme, as well as Richard Strauss' humorous Burleske. The concert concludes with Robert Schumann's Symphony No. 3, nicknamed 'Rhenish,' inspired by the composer's time in the Rhineland.

Emelyanychev interprets Salonen & Schumann

Centering the program is Igor Stravinsky’s monumental Le sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring), infamous for its avant-garde music and ballet choreography. A lighter take on the season is Lili Boulanger’s vivacious yet introspective D’un matin de printemps (Of a Spring Morning). Richard Strauss’s Don Juan, Op. 20 depicts the legendary ill-fated bachelor.

Northwestern University Symphony Orchestra

Northwestern University

Cynthia Hu, soprano

First performed in Dresden in 1924, Richard Strauss’s Intermezzo provides all manner of insights into his turbulent married life.

Intermezzo

Semperoper Dresden

Ax & Alexander

Artis–Naples

Seduction is the subtext in this program that pairs Richard Strauss’s portrait of the famous fictional philanderer and Ravel’s Bolero, whose relentless pulse mirrors the beat of desire. Beyond the bedroom, we turn our gaze to galaxies far, far away, as Pulitzer Prize–winning composer Kevin Puts’sContact imagines encounters with other beings.

Bolero and Don Juan

Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts

Soprano and conductor Barbara Hannigan, one of the singular artists of our time, transforms Poulenc’s one-act opera into a harrowing multimedia experience depicting the final conversation between ex-lovers. Also on the program: Richard Strauss’s Metamorphosen, a profound memorial for human culture devastated by war.

Composer

Richard Strauss

Events

Upcoming events

Sep 20, 2025 - Jul 11, 2026

Wie du warst! Wie du bist! · Opernhaus Zürich

Jan 11 - Nov 15, 2026

Members of the Teatro alla Scala Orchestra · Teatro alla Scala

May 1, 2026 - Mar 31, 2027

Salome · Wiener Staatsoper

May 9, 2026 - Feb 19, 2027

Der Rosenkavalier · Wiener Staatsoper

May 9 - Jun 26, 2026

The Rosenkavalier · Oper Graz

Past events

18 - 20 Jun, 2026

Salome · Cincinnati Opera

Jun 14, 2026

Sunday Matinee 05: Dalia Stasevska & Boris Giltburg · Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum

About

Richard Strauss hasn't added a bio

Composer

Richard Strauss

Events

Upcoming events

Sep 20, 2025 - Jul 11, 2026

Wie du warst! Wie du bist! · Opernhaus Zürich

Jan 11 - Nov 15, 2026

Members of the Teatro alla Scala Orchestra · Teatro alla Scala

May 1, 2026 - Mar 31, 2027

Salome · Wiener Staatsoper

May 9, 2026 - Feb 19, 2027

Der Rosen­kavalier · Wiener Staatsoper

May 9 - Jun 26, 2026

The Rosenkavalier · Oper Graz

Past events

18 - 20 Jun, 2026

Salome · Cincinnati Opera

Jun 14, 2026

Sunday Matinee 05: Dalia Stasevska & Boris Giltburg · Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum

About

Richard Strauss hasn't added a bio

Der Rosenkavalier · Wiener Staatsoper