Andreas Helm

With its Chief Conductor Toshiyuki Kamioka at the helm, the Copenhagen Philharmonic performs three of Richard Strauss’s most sparkling scores: the Oboe Concerto, with soloist Andreas Fosdal, the First Horn Concerto, played by Jakob Keiding, and the suite from Der Bürger als Edelmann. Strauss’s Oboe Concerto is in three seamless movements: a pastoral opening with ornate oboe lines leads into a radiant slow movement and virtuoso finale. Strauss’s famous horn-playing father inspired his First Horn Concerto, which reveals his evident relish for the horn’s uninhibited, bucolic character as it cuts through the orchestral colours. Strauss’s music for Der Bürger als Edelmann (based on the 17th-century Molière-Lully collaboration Le bourgeois gentilhomme) is an early instance of neoclassicism, originally composed to be performed immediately before his opera Ariadne auf Naxos. The result is a quintessentially Straussian confection, combining lyricism and good humour.