Concert Review: The Private Lives of the Great Composers

Beethoven and Strauss at the Lincoln Center Festival.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Dr. Richard Strauss at the piano in 1903.
Photo from Wikimedia Commons.

The concept of the "program symphony," where multiple movements tell some kind of coherent story or evoke a time and place originated with Ludwig van Beethoven and the Symphony No. 6, known as the Pastorale. On Friday night, the Cleveland Orchestra played the third of four concerts this week at the Lincoln Center Festival. Music director Franz Welser-Möst paired the Pastorale with the Symphonia Domestica, a stellar example of the genre written a century later by Richard Strauss.