American Symphony Orchestra, Leon Botstein, conductor

The ASO spotlights Richard Strauss’s seldom heard pastoral opera Daphne. With its lush orchestral palette, endlessly shifting harmonic motion, sumptuous melodies, combined with a diaphanous serenity typical of Strauss’s later style, Daphne reveals to us a composer arguably at the peak of his powers, supremely confident in his abilities as both composer and dramatist.