5. Sinfoniekonzert - Heldenleben by Higdon, Price, Strauss, man. 22 jan. 2024, Fra (2024/2024), Dirigent Carl St. Clair, Historische Stadthalle, Wuppertal, Germany

Carl St. Clair, a welcome guest in Wuppertal for 25 years, has put together a concert programme that combines contemporary American music with a classic from the German Romantic period and a composer who has been woefully forgotten by music history. The composer in question is Florence Price who faced marginalisation on several fronts as a woman and as a person of colour. But her talent and tenacity made her one of the first African American composers whose works blend European Romanticism with the musical traditions of the southern United States in the form of gospel music and spirituals to create her very own musical style. “Blue Cathedral”, on the other hand, is a contemporary American work by Jennifer Higdon, dedicated to the memory of her younger brother who died two years before its first performance in the year 2000. The concert concludes with Richard Strauss’ tone poem “A Hero’s Life”, an – admittedly not exactly modest – self-portrait of the Bavarian wizard of tone colour. The composer included no fewer than 30 references to his own works in this epic poem. The result is an exceedingly powerful musical autobiography.