The three works in this programme reflect different aspects of Strauss’s compositional life. The tone-poem Macbeth, written between 1888 and 1891, offers a grippingly taut narrative. The Dance of the Seven Veils from the 1905 opera Salome is one of its most exciting and intoxicating moments. Towards the end of his life, facing the ruin wrought by World War II, Strauss took inspiration from Goethe and wrote Metamorphosen, one of the most moving of all twentieth-century works.