Abstract
Nils Mönkemeyer fell in love with the earthy, versatile sound of the viola at an early age. Today he is one of the most internationally successful artists on this instrument. In the 3rd Philharmonic Concert, he interprets the Concerto for Viola and Orchestra by Béla Bartók. This work, which has only survived as a sketch - and was completed by Bartók's pupil Tibor Serly - was written in Bartók's year of death, 1945, in exile in New York. Gustav Mahler's 10th Symphony was also left as a fragment at his death in 1910. The Adagio from it, however, can be counted among the highlights of Mahler's late work in its emotional radicalism. Early in his youth, Richard Strauss dealt artistically with the end of life: he composed his tone poem Tod und Verklärung (Death and Transfiguration) at the age of 25, which leads effectively from a sombre C minor to a transfigured C major.