“The most perfect melodic shapes are found in Mozart”, said Richard Strauss of his famous 18th century predecessor. “Listen to the remarkable expansion of a Mozart melody.... You think it is coming to an end, but it goes farther, much farther.” Strauss’s Metamorphosen, “A Study for 23 Solo Strings” is a monument of beautiful, evolving sorrow, written near the end of the Second World War. Believed to be his personal elegy to the devastation of culture during the war, it is perhaps also a subtle reminder of the transformative power of art in a time of adversity.
