ANAM Radio: Strauss's Metamorphosen (Ep 8 2020)

Episode 8, 2020: Strauss’s Metamorphosen
Wednesday 5 August 2020

The position of Richard Strauss during the Second World War was truly tragic. Already an esteemed composer during his time, he was used by the Nazi Party as a validation of its program. His contrasting political view was compromised by his desire to protect his Jewish family members. The war ended when Strauss was about 80 years old. At this time, he was inconsolable because of his perceived destruction of the German culture brought by the war. Metamorphosen is a play on the word ‘metamorphosis’ whose classical meaning of ‘rebirth’ the great composer inverts to describe how German culture descended to bestiality, of ’man killing man’, through the course of the Second World War.

Laura Barton (violin 2019) chats to Phil Lambert (ANAM Music Librarian) about conducting this masterpiece with ANAM Musicians during her final year at ANAM. For her, Metamorphosen is a complete overview of German culture as seen in Strauss’s perspective – the unbridled joy reached during the piece’s climax, only to come crashing down in the end.

This performance of Strauss’s Metamorphosen is from the 2019 ANAM Soundbite concert that formed part of Laura’s Master of Music thesis that she was concurrently completing at Griffith University while also completing the ANAM Performance Program. It was performed by ANAM string musicians with Laura as the conductor.

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