Oslo Philharmonic Chamber Series: Music in Transformation

This week's chamber concert mirrors the season finale, with two significant works by the same composers: György Ligeti and Richard Strauss.

György Ligeti (1923–2006) wrote his String Quartet No. 1 "Metamorphoses nocturnes" in 1953–54, the title referring to the form of the work. As the composer himself explained: "It is a kind of variation form, but there is no specific theme to be varied. Rather, one and the same musical concept materialises in ever-new forms, and therefore Metamorphoses is more precise than Variations."

Ligeti's early works were too radical for the authorities, and many of them were left in a drawer. He fled Hungary in 1956 following the Soviet invasion, and this string quartet was therefore not premiered until 1958, at the Musikverein in Vienna.

Richard Strauss's (1864–1949) Metamorphosen for string septet is one of the composer's best-known works. It is written as an elegy, mourning music, over the devastation of the Second World War. Metamorphosen was inspired by Goethe's two introspective poems of the same title, and Strauss displays his brilliance by presenting several themes that he then transforms along the way. There is little doubt that this work is an outlet for the deepest despair and sorrow over what the war had brought about and how the world had become.