Death and Transfiguration

The Romantics pursued the idea of transcendence as an aesthetic and philosophical goal. Richard Strauss’s symphonic poem Tod und Verklärung (Death and Transfiguration) is a paradigmatic example. Rather than following a literary programme laid down beforehand, the work focuses on the themes of artistic sublimation and eternity. The score portrays mundane events in sound, such as the uneven beating of the artist’s heart or the description in sound of the moment when his soul leaves his body, but the backdrop to the work is much more profound. In its final minutes, the composer endeavoured to convey an emotion that is difficult to put into words.

Noches en los jardines de España (Nights in the Gardens of Spain), by Manuel de Falla, was first performed in 1916, a work for piano and symphony orchestra. Originally it was conceived as a series of nocturnes for solo piano, dedicated to Ricard Viñes, the pianist from Lleida. It is one of the Andalusian composer’s most international works with features that have close links with the works of the French Debussy and Ravel.