Commissioned by Basel patron Paul Sacher from Richard Strauss, then exiled in Switzerland following his complacency towards the Nazi regime, the Metamorphosen, study for 23 solo strings are both an extraordinary study for strings, with dense writing, at the same time than the terrible acknowledgment of the end of a world in a Germany in ruins. Built entirely on a motif from the Funeral March of Beethoven's Eroica Symphony, it bears painful witness to the horror of the War finally over and the nothingness it produced. The rest of the program dedicated to Mozart and Beethoven further reinforces the amazement in front of a civilization capable of the best as well as the worst. Still belonging to the “Galant Style”, the Violin Concerto No. 5, the most developed of the five, composed by Mozart, contains seductive melodies and a Hungarian finale according to the fashion of the time. If Beethoven's Symphony No. 1still walks in the brilliant footsteps of Haydn and Mozart, it nonetheless constitutes the first milestone in a series that would condition the entire history of music written after it.