Do not build your happiness on the misfortune of others: this is the moral of Richard Strauss's monumental fairy-tale opera «Die Frau ohne Schatten», for which his librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal drew inspiration from Mozart's «Magic Flute». Strauss's symphonic fantasy brings the opera's sound world, shimmering with every colour, into the concert hall as a drama without words. Johannes Brahms's heroic third symphony, also full of drama, leads to a lyrical apotheosis. Fabien Gabel has also chosen Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Piano Concerto K. 482 as the centrepiece of this stirring programme, with award-winning German pianist Martin Helmchen as soloist.