Richard Strauss Zueignung
Growing intensity, with each stanza culminating in gratitude.
About the video
- Filmed 15 January 2026.
- The video is approximately 2 minutes.
Zueignung (Dedication) is the first song in Richard Strauss’s Opus 10 from 1885, a collection that marked his early breakthrough as a composer of Lieder. The text is by the Austrian poet Hermann von Gilm and centres on the transformative power of love and gratitude towards the beloved.
Strauss captures the poem’s mounting intensity in music that grows ever more passionate. Each of the three stanzas ends with the same words, Habe Dank – “accept my thanks” – but each recurrence carries greater force. From the longing of the first stanza, the song moves through memories of a freer life to the final stanza’s image of love as a purifying and redemptive force.
With its sweeping melodies and powerful build-up, Zueignung encapsulates in just a few minutes much of what would become so characteristic of Strauss’s songs. Here it is performed in Robert Heger’s 1929 orchestral version.
-
The music
-
Richard Strauss Zueignung arr Robert Heger
-
Participants
-
Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra
-
Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider conductor
-
Christina Nilsson soprano
