Worlds Within

This unique work for 23 solo string instruments is music built in layers: each instrument an individual voice, each line of counterpoint a strand of grief. Written in 1945 as Europe lay in ruins, the work entwines multiple references: Goethe’s poetry, the collapse of German cultural life, Strauss’s private ‘In Memoriam’, and his dedication to Paul Sacher. Its textures carry quotations from Beethoven’s Eroica funeral march, interwoven with Strauss’s own themes, as if voices of past and present mourn together. Strauss gives grief architectural form: a lament of memory, devastation and fragile hope.

Composed in 2006, These Worlds in Us was the piece that first brought American composer Missy Mazzoli to international attention. Dedicated to her father, a Vietnam veteran, the work explores how memory and love survive the distances created by war. Shimmering harmonies, slow-building waves of sound and a sense of suspended time make it a powerful contemporary counterpart to Strauss’s meditation on destruction and rebirth. Mazzoli describes the piece as “a song for those who remain,” and its tone is both elegiac and luminous.

After such introspection comes release: Mendelssohn’s Scottish Symphony captures the spirit and grandeur of the Highlands in music that is atmospheric, rhythmically alive and ultimately exultant. Completed in 1842 after a long gestation, the symphony blends classical balance with Romantic colour, its final movement transforming minor-key struggle into radiant triumph. It is one of Mendelssohn’s most beloved works, uniting architectural clarity with heartfelt expression.