大象传媒

Katie Derham continues this week's exploration of the music of Richard Strauss beginning today with his Second Horn Concerto. Written in Vienna during the Second World War, it is a characteristic late work by the composer which reflects in every bar his life-long love affair with the horn. Indeed Strauss's father was for fifty years the noted and famously truculent principal horn of the Munich Court Opera Orchestra, so this performance recorded in Munich is particularly apt.
Also today, Semyon Bychkov leads the Berlin Philharmonic and its principals in Strauss's Fantastic Variations on a Theme of Knightly Character and Schubert's towering 'Great C Major' symphony. Written towards the end of Schubert's short life, it was Schumann who was the first to realise the significance of this hour long symphony lying on the shelves of Schubert's brother, Ferdinand: "The sight of this hoard of riches thrilled me with joy..." he wrote, "There, among the piles, lay a heavy volume of 130 pages, dated March 1828 at the top of the first sheet. The manuscript is entirely in Schubert's hand, which often appears to have been flying as fast as his pen could go."

Strauss
Horn Concerto no 2 in E flat
J枚rg Br眉ckner (horn)
Munich Philharmonic Orchestra, Semyon Bychkov (conductor)

c. 2.40pm
Strauss
Don Quixote, op. 35
M谩t茅 Sz眉cs (viola)
Bruno Delepelaire (cello)
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Semyon Bychkov (conductor)

c.3.25pm
Schubert
Symphony no 9 in C major 'The Great'
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Semyon Bychkov (conductor).