Der Rosenkavalier - Final Trio. Renee Fleming, Frederica von Stade, and Kathleen Battle.

Leon Botstein, music director of the American Symphony Orchestra

The five minutes or so I would choose to inspire a love affair with classical music are the closing moments of Strauss’s opera “Der Rosenkavalier”: the final trio. Here is a heartbreaking use of music’s essential instrument, the voice, giving each of the three singers the simultaneous chance to express herself with transparency and beauty. Using elegant and sophisticated strategies from the traditions of classical music, Strauss draws each listener into music’s capacity to inspire a personal recognition of the bittersweet transition from desire to fulfillment, and ultimately to loss.