Staatsoper Unter den Linden, Berlin, 20 October 2026
Richard Strauss: Vier letzte Lieder & Eine Alpensinfonie
Christian Thielemann has just promised to turn Berlin into a Strauss city. At the newly opened Apollo Salon, there was no need to mention his own importance as one of the finest conductors devoted to this composer.
But his keen analysis of subtle details of sound in selected songs, during a conversation with dramaturg Giese, only added to the enthusiasm. The fact that the young Richard Strauss conducted no fewer than 1,200 (!) performances at the Berlin Court Opera between 1898 and 1918, as we learned at this matinée, is perhaps the most astonishing detail from a forgotten chapter of history.
In the Four Last Songs at the latest symphony concert, Diana Damrau, now 55, proves to be an ideal interpreter. Her soprano bathes the verses of Hesse and Eichendorff in tender, feminine warmth.
Thielemann holds the orchestra back so carefully that even in her softest passages, her voice can float above it. The mutual inspiration is almost tangible. Looking into each other’s eyes, it seems, he conducts the music’s mysterious beauty in long, sweeping melodic lines straight into her throat. Every single word melts on the tongue, caught between the enchantment of nature, farewell and death.
Even in a monumental work like An Alpine Symphony, Thielemann, a magician of sound, reveals delicate chamber music alongside thunderous fortissimo passages, often within moments of each other: two violins in dialogue, a lonely oboe or a single trumpet.
The journey across meadows and alpine pastures, past streams and dangers, all the way to the mountain summit, could hardly be more vivid in the mind’s eye. The composer’s supreme skill at orchestration, making use of herd bells, wind machine and organ, meets the finely tuned sensitivity of an alchemist exploring the full richness of the orchestral sound.
The brass alone, in all its majestic brilliance — and this cannot be said often enough — shows what the conductor has achieved through his insistence on the highest standards of perfection.
After Die schweigsame Frau and a festive Der Rosenkavalier, conductor and orchestra once again bow deeply to the master of late Romantic music with this magnificent evening.
Berlin is already a Strauss city, Mr Thielemann! And what a Strauss city it is.
