Don Juan

About the work

Composed in 1888 and premiered the following year in Weimar under the twenty-four-year-old composer. The source is Lenau's verse drama, whose Don Juan is not a libertine but a man forever pursuing an ideal he never finds. The upward-rushing violin figure at the opening is the work's calling card. There is no triumph at the close: after a silence, a cold trumpet chord cuts the music off.

Upcoming performances