American Symphony Orchestra - Truth or Truffles

After the devastation of the First World War, Richard Strauss chose to write an escapist ballet filled with dancing candy and whipped cream. Hartmann, on the other hand, responded to his World War II experience and the start of the Cold War with an apocalyptic setting of Sodom and Gomorrah, warning that new dictators were unlikely to learn from the mistakes of their predecessors. Two composers, two very different responses to the brutality of the modern age.

HARTMANN

Gesangsszene (“Sodom and Gomorrah”)

R. STRAUSS

Schlagobers (“Whipped Cream”)