The music of the Asian tour: Richard Strauss’ "Ein Heldenleben" ("A Hero’s Life"), Thomas Adès’ "Asyla" and Ludwig van Beethoven’s "Eroica". Here you can find interesting background information about the pieces.

The CLASSICAL ALBUM by the Berliner Philharmoniker called "The Music of the Tour" includes "Heldenleben" ("A Hero’s Life") and "Asyla". It was released in Germany on May 2nd, 2008.

The second album (2-CD), including the originally composed SOUNDTRACK by Simon Stockhausen and exciting remixes by 2raumwohnung, Marusha, Jimi Tenor, Martinie Brös. and many more, was released in February 2008.

Ein Heldenleben (A Hero’s Life), which was completed in 1898, and Sinfonia domestica, composed five years later, are Richard Strauss’ most important contributions to the genre of musical autobiography. Ein Heldenleben was conceived as an homage to Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony – hence the selection of the same key, E-flat major. Strauss’ sketches clearly show that from the beginning, he was planning a programmatic composition on the subject of “the hero and the world”. In the final version, the tone poem is divided into six sections, which were given the following titles in the autograph: Der Held (The Hero), Des Helden Widersacher (The Hero’s Adversaries), Des Helden Gefährtin (The Hero’s Companion), Des Helden Walstatt (The Hero’s Battlefield), Des Helden Friedenswerke (The Hero and his Works of Peace) and Des Helden Weltflucht und Vollendung (The Hero’s Retreat from the World and Fulfillment). None of these titles were printed when the score was published.

The extremely powerful first part (Der Held) is the principal movement of the exposition; the second movement (Des Helden Widersacher), initially with chamber music instrumentation, represents the scherzo. The third part (Des Helden Gefährtin) begins in dialogical form with a dominating solo violin, and then continues on into an expressive love scene. The fourth part (Des Hel den Walstatt) illustrates a battle scene with its piercing dissonances, while Strauss quotes his earlier works, among them his early opera Guntram and tone poems, in the fifth (Des Helden Friedenswerke). The sixth part (Des Helden Weltflucht und Vollendung) serves as the epilogue.

Without a doubt, Ein Heldenleben ranks among Richard Strauss’ symphonic masterpieces – a tone poem in the true sense of the word that impresses its listeners by its opulent orchestral sound, its richness of harmony, the descriptive power of its leitmotifs, its dense polyphonic texture, and not least through the incomparable skill of Strauss’ musical portrayal of specific characteristics. 

The British composer Thomas Adès, born in 1971, wrote Asyla for the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra; the piece was premiered by this orchestra under the direction of Simon Rattle in 1997. The title is ambiguous: “asylum” is not only a place of refuge, but also a sanatorium and psychiatric hospital. Asyla’s orchestral tonality is characterized by precisely this ambiguity.

While the composition’s instrumentation for triple wood, triple brass and full strings (68 players) is oriented by that of a large symphony orchestra, six percussionists and two pianists are added to this “standard instrumentation”. Adès coaxes a broad range of unusual sound effects from this symphonic orchestral ensemble by combining instruments in unfamiliar ways and using experimental playing techniques. Adès is a virtuoso in presenting his listeners with seemingly accessible, even simple musical compositions; however, his arrangements are, in fact, extremely complex.

To a very large extent, Asyla’s special power to fascinate its listeners originates from this ability. Perhaps the most striking example of Adès’ creative deformation of the elements of musical history and present-day music is given in the third movement, Ecstasio. While written in the tradition of a symphonic scherzo, the material used is entirely contemporary. Twitching rhythms, endless loops formed by particles of melody and melancholy sequences of synthetic chords all combine to make this movement a fascinating portrait of the worlds of sound we find in techno music. Using different transformational processes, Adès stylizes these worlds and translates them into symphonic music. 

»composed for Buonaparte« – Beethoven’s Eroica symphony

»Those who know what I have once avowed […] will hardly accuse me of ever having been an adherent of the French and of their revolution,« the German patriot Ernst Moritz Arndt wrote in 1814, »but I would be ungrateful and a hypocrite were I not to confess how endlessly much we owe to this wild and mad revolution […] for bringing into the hearts and minds those ideas that were most urgently required to lay the foundations for the future, and that most people trembled at twenty or thirty years ago.«

The overwhelming effect that the French Revolution and its aftermath had on German artists and intellectuals around 1800, and the influence it had on the philosophical thought and artistic production of its time can hardly be over-estimated.  Without a doubt, Beethoven’s Third Symphony, also called the »Eroica« Symphony, can be counted among the most impressive works of art created in those times of historic upheaval.  While it was written originally as a mythologizing tribute to the Republican general and First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte, the various modifications undergone by the work’s title reflect Beethoven’s ambivalent relationship to post-revolutionary France and its great political leader.  In one of the most famous anecdotes ever told in musical history, Ferdinand Ries reports how he witnessed Beethoven bursting with Republican outrage in May of 1804, and tearing apart the title page of the Third Symphony he had dedicated to Napoleon, »I was the first to tell him the news that Buonaparte had declared himself Emperor, whereupon he broke into a rage and exclaimed, ›So he is no more than a common mortal! Now, too, he will tread under foot all the rights of man, indulge only his ambition; now he will think himself superior to all men, become a tyrant!‹ Beethoven went to the table, seized the top of the title-page, tore it in half and threw it on the floor.«

An early copy of the score bears witness to the fact that Beethoven indeed erased the original dedication, but continued to feel that the relationship between the work and Napoleon was important: the name »Buonaparte« has been erased with such vehemence that the page now has a hole.  After this violent act of obliteration, the note »geschrieben auf Buonaparte«, »composed for Buonaparte«, was added later.   In 1809, the score of the work was published, now without any personalized dedication, bearing the title »Sinfonia eroica composta per festeggiare il sovvenire di un grand’uomo«.  Whether, five years after having completed the Eroica Symphony, Beethoven still meant Napoleon to be the »great man” musically celebrated by it, or whether he now intended to laud the German patriot, Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia, who was killed in action fighting Napoleonic imperialism, cannot be decided with any certainty today.  

The Eroica Symphony not only marks a turning point in Beethoven’s composition, it bears witness to a fundamental change in his symphonic work as a whole.  Writing a purely instrumental work comprising far more than 2,000 bars, one that, due to its complexity, demands the utmost of concentration from players and listeners alike for fifty minutes, had been unimaginable until then. Beethoven knew of the difficulties that his unprecedented composition posed; he recommended that the symphony be played at the beginning of a concert when the public was not yet too tired.  His decision to have the exposition of the first movement repeated, in accordance with musical tradition, was taken only after the composer had heard the work played several times at private performances.

The Eroica is famed for its structure, which seems to take listeners along in a process.  After two massive forte chords, it does not embark on a main theme to be completed, but continues with a simple triad motif in the cello, which then drifts away chromatically after just a few bars.  In the further course of the symphony, this basic concept is varied several times, expanded and heightened in particular in the reprise and the large coda.  But even the last formulation of this thought, when the coda reaches its climax, does not round off the symphony in its harmonic openness.  The »constant, ever increasing drive and pressure« that E.T.A. Hoffmann described as the characteristic element of Beethoven’s symphonic style in his famous review of the Fifth Symphony – this is certainly a part of the Eroica Symphony, which continues on until the closing chords of the movement.