The music of Schumann and Richard Strauss was fruitfully paired in two programmes given by the NDR Sinfonieorchester and Christoph von Dohnányi. An elegiac theme predominated during the second of them. Schumann wrote his Second Symphony while suffering tinnitus and a psychological crisis during the winter of 1845-6. However, the fate of the finale turns on the appearance of the theme derived from Beethoven’s song-cycle An die ferne Geliebte, and triumphant resolution is found; whereas Strauss expressed only despair and painful remembrance in composing Metamorphosen as a fantasia-like elaboration of the Funeral March from Beethoven’s ‘Eroica’ Symphony.