Overture Magazine: 2016-2017 Season May-June 2017 | Page 23

program notes {
F renesia
Detlev Glanert
Like the mighty creator of late-
Romantic tone poems Richard Strauss,
Detlev Glanert is a master composer
of music for both large orchestra and
the operatic stage. In fact, Glanert is
the most performed living composer of
opera in Germany today. As he admits,
he is also a great fan of Strauss —
and especially of his flamboyant tone
poem Ein Heldenleben (A Hero’s
Life). So when Glanert, who has been
composer-in-residence at the Royal
Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam
for nearly a decade, was asked to write
an orchestral work for the ensemble to
honor Strauss’ 150 th birthday in 2014,
he decided to take inspiration from
this work.
However, Glanert says his Frenesia
— the Italian word for the state of
being frenetic — is really about a man
of today, not of an earlier, mythical
era. “It could be considered an anti-
Heldenleben, because the piece is
against the traditional Romantic view
of grand heroism, which I think is no
longer possible after the historic events
leading to 1945.…Strauss hi