Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider
Ting-Wei Chen Richard Strauss
Carl Nielsen
Pyotr Tchaikovsky

According to legend, the charming swindler and prankster Till Eulenspiegel lived in the 14th century and is the hero of almost a hundred folk tales. In the tone poem Till Eulenspiegel from 1896, Richard Strauss (1864-1949) cheerfully portrays him with horn and clarinet. 

Till Eulenspiegel is one of Strauss’ most humorous works, as full of inventions and surprises as the main character. Till dresses up, flirts with the ladies and makes fun of the scholars before he is put on trial and sentenced to death. The ending is ambiguous – does he manage to escape?

In 1921, Carl Nielsen (1865-1931) was captivated by a concert with the Copenhagen Wind Quintet. He knew the musicians, and wrote a piece for the quiet in which each one is described with music. He wanted to write one solo concerto for each – he managed two and started with the flutist.

“Eventually, the orchestral movement also becomes fuller and more moving, but this does not last long, because the flute cannot deny its nature (...) the composer must therefore adapt to its gentle nature,” Nielsen wrote about the Flute Concerto from 1926, a gentle and cheerful work in which there is a storm in between.

“The music from this ballet will become one of my best works. The subject is so poetic, so well suited to music, that I was entirely engrossed in composing it, and wrote with an ardor and passion which always results,” wrote Pyotr Tchaikovsky (1841-1893) during the work with Sleeping Beauty.

With Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, and The Nutcracker, Tchaikovsky set a completely new standard for the ballet genre and greatly raised the status of ballet music. Sleeping Beauty premiered in 1890. The Sleeping Beauty Suite, composed after his death, features five orchestral excerpts from the ballet.