An die Hoffnung ("O Hoffnung! Holde, gütiggeschäftige!"), song for mezzo-soprano or alto & orchestra or piano, Op. 124

• Date: May 29, 1912
• Composer: Max Reger
• Period: Post-Romantic (1870-1909)

Review

Reger composed this for and dedicated it to alto Anna Erler-Schnaudt, with whom he gave the first performance. As with the voice for which the extended song was intended, there's a darkness to the text by Friedrich Hölderlin, despite its title, "To Hope." The piece is, in effect, a vocal nocturne on the subject of death and redemption. Reger's style is steeped in that of Brahms, but his harmonies and orchestral sonorities are rather more decadent, typical of late German Romanticism. The orchestra's restrained introductory measures could almost have been lifted from Brahms' German Requiem, but soon the music becomes tonally slippery as the strings utter ardent sighs and the soloist enters with the words:

"O hope! Lovely, merciful, busy one!

Who does not avoid the home of the grieving,

O hope! And pleased to serve, noble one,

Between mortals and the powers of heaven!"

After a hesitation, the music rises to a passionate little climax on the line:

"Where are you, O hope! I've lived so little."

Then it subsides into an almost recitative-like setting of the next words:

"Yet I already feel

The cold breath of my evening. And I'm already silent,

Like a shadow; and devoid of song

The shuddering heart sleeps in my breast."

The music brightens considerably for the next bucolic passage:

"In the green valley, where the fresh spring flows

Daily from the mountain, and the peaceful

Timeless one blooms for me in the light of fall.

There, in the silence, you lovely one, I will

Seek you, or when at midnight

The invisible life awakens in the grove,

And above me the blossoms, ever gentle,

The constant stars shine bright,

O you, lovely one, I will find you.

"O you, daughter of the ether! Appear then

From you father's gardens, and if you may not

Grant me mortal fortune,

Thrill my heart with other things."

In the end, the alto rhapsodizes briefly on a final, ecstatic line: "Lovely hope, O hope!" ~ James Reel, Rovi

Albums with Complete Performances of the Work

Title	Date
Brahms, Richard Strauss, Max Reger, Wolfgang Rihm: Music Inspired by the Poet Friedrich Hölderlin	1994
Bruckner: Symphonies Nos. 7 & 8; Reger: An die Hoffnung
Max Reger Edition Vol. 12	1999
Max Reger: Orchesterlieder	1990
Max Reger: Sinfonietta Op. 90; An die Hoffnung Op. 124; Hymnus der Liebe Op. 136	1996
Music of Max Reger: Reger & Romanticism	2002
Reger: Lieder	1996
Reger: Sinfonietta; An die Hoffnung; Hymnus der Liebe	2002
Reger: Works for Orchestra [Box Set]	2006
Scherchen conducts Reger	1995
Wurzeln und Halme	2001

Previous:	An die Hoffnung ("Ich würd auf meinem Pfad"), song for voice & piano, K. 390 (K. 340c)
Next:	An die Hoffnung (I), song for voice & piano, Op. 32