Performance

Metamorphosen

0 upcoming performances in New York

Richard Strauss’s *Metamorphosen* is a late work for 23 independent string parts, written in 1944–45 as Europe’s cultural landscape was collapsing. Scored for an enlarged, soloistic string ensemble, it unfolds as a continuous lament, built from dense counterpoint and recurring motifs that suggest memory and loss rather than narrative. In New York, it has been taken up by the city’s major orchestras as a postwar touchstone, often programmed as a sober counterweight to brighter repertory. Its severity can feel unsparing, which is part of its historical honesty.