An informative and entertaining audio-visual concert at the Semper Opera Dresden (1998) with the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden conducted by Giuseppe Sinopoli and hosted by Habakuk Traber who analyzes the composer Richard Strauss's most famous work. Richard Strauss - Eine Alpensinfonie, Op. 64 6:00 Nacht (Night) 9:14 Sonnenaufgang (Sunrise) 9:55 Der Anstieg (The Ascent) 11:08 Eintritt in den Wald (Entering into the Forest) 14:00 Am Wasserfall (By the Waterfall) 14:30 Erscheinung (Apparition) 15:21 Durch Dickicht und Gestrüpp auf Irrwegen (On the wrong track through thickets and undergrowth) 18:45 Auf dem Gipfel (On the Summit) 20:17 Vision (Vision) 21:44 Die Sonne verdüstert sich allmählich (The sun gradually dims) 23:28 Der Anstieg (The ascent) 24:21 Gewitter und Sturm, Abstieg (Thunder and Tempest, Descent) 26:10 Sonnenuntergang (The sunset) 27:14 Nacht (Night) "I was recently at Siegfried, and I have to say that I was bored to tears," Richard Strauss admitted in 1978 to Ludwig Thuille, a friend of his youth. It is not difficult to recognize behind these words the views of Strauss's father, Franz, who was principal horn player in the Bavarian Court Orchestra and who, deeply conservative in outlook, had brought up his son to admire the classics - which inevitably meant loathing Wagner. During the winter of 1885/1886, however, when he was music director in Meiningen, the young Strauss was introduced to the composer Alexander Ritter, an encounter he later described as a "turning point" in his life. Ritter was an enthusiastic Wagnerian and was soon able to convert his protégé to the programme music of Liszt and to the Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk. "His influence had something of a whirlwind about it," Strauss declared. "He urged me to develop the expressive, poetic element in music after the exemple of Berlioz, Liszt and Strauss." By the summer of 1888 the twenty-four-year old Strauss was no longer in any doubt about the new direction that his music would take from now on: "If one wants to create a work of art that is unified in terms of its mood and logically consistent structure and if this work is to have a vivid impact on the listener, then what the composer wanted to express must also have appeared vividly before his mind's eye. This is possible only if the music is fertilized by a poetic idea, whether or not this idea is appended to the work as programme." Watch more episodes of the series "Discovering Masterpieces of Classical Music": goo.gl/KBV6cR Subscribe to EuroArts: goo.gl/jrui3M

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