The concert begins with Dukas’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, a symphonic poem that many will know from the Disney classic Fantasia (1940) featuring Mickey Mouse as the apprentice.
Dvořák’s opera Rusalka is based on Hans Christian Andersen’s fairytale The Little Mermaid. The aria “Song to the Moon” is the mermaid’s prayer to meet her beloved human prince. Soprano Mia Karlsson and tenor Adam Frandsen sing the roles of Rusalka and the prince.
The Mother Goose Suite by Ravel includes Conversations of Beauty and the Beast, Sleeping Beauty and Little Tom Thumb. The concert ends with Strauss’s Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche, a humorous orchestral work about the comic misadventures of prankster Till Eulenspiegel in his exposure of powerful hypocrites. In response to the slightly pretentious question of whether he had any metaphysical intentions in Eulenspiegel, Strauss responded, “Oh, no — I only wanted to give the people in the concert hall a good laugh for once.”
The conductor of the concert is Constantin Trinks, a Strauss specialist.