Thursday 2 February 2012 7.30pm
Thursday 9 February 2012 7.30pm
KURT MASUR conductor ARABELLA STEINBACHER violin
TUGAN SOKHIEV conductor ARCADI VOLODOS piano
MENDELSSOHN Violin Concerto BRUCKNER Symphony No. 7
BRAHMS Piano Concerto No. 2 SHOSTAKOVICH Symphony No. 8
Throughout his life, Bruckner was devoted to the music of Wagner; at the time of Wagner’s death, he was working on his Seventh Symphony, which became his elegy to his musical hero. The symphony opens with a broad and serene melody on the cellos, described by Julian Johnson as a “complete, divinely given melodic whole”, which is conjured out of a near-silent string tremolando. The lyrical and heart-rending second movement is permeated with the essence of the Catholic liturgy, with the orchestra imitating the timbre of a church organ and choir. The movement also introduces a quartet of Wagner tubas, which reappears in the final movement as part of a blazing fanfare.
The central work in the trilogy of Shostakovich’s so-called ‘War Symphonies’, the Eighth Symphony is an incredibly powerful work and one that emanates a profound feeling of tragedy. The great arch of the first movement leads into two movements reminiscent of the mechanistic industry of war; and the finale tries to sound light and pastoral but is slowly beaten into an exhausted peace. The evening also features Arcadi Volodos performing Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto, a work that encompasses a passionate Scherzo, a lyrical slow movement and a finale suffused with Brahms’s Hungarian gypsy idiom.
This concert is supported by The Zvi and Ofra Meitar Family Fund
6pm Music of Today, Royal Festival Hall A portrait of Ivan Fedele conducted by Wen-Pin Chien with soprano Valentina Coladonato. FREE admission
“The still point of the turning world”: Music that defines an era
EIN DEUTSCHES REQUIEM
6pm Pre-concert recital, Royal Festival Hall Recital by trumpeter Tom Poulson, award-winner of the Martin Musical Scholarship Fund. FREE admission
Arcadi Volodos in recital
Thursday 16 February 2012 7.30pm
Tuesday 22 May 2012 7.30pm
CHRISTOPH VON DOHNÁNYI conductor SUSAN GRITTON soprano SIMON KEENLYSIDE baritone PHILHARMONIA CHORUS PHILHARMONIA VOICES
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www.philharmonia.co.uk
© ‘Requiem’ poster by Lozenko / RIA Novosti / Lebrecht Music & Arts
Tickets £10-£52, Students’ Platform Seats £7; bookable through Southbank Centre only. Call 0844 847 9921 or visit www.southbankcentre.co.uk
Kurt Masur © Chris Christodoulou/Lebrecht Music & Arts
Part of Southbank Centre’s International Piano Series SCHUBERT Sonata in A minor, D.784 BRAHMS 3 Intermezzi, Op. 117 LISZT Sonata in B minor
Quotation from TS Eliot’s Four Quartets
BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 4 BRAHMS Ein deutsches Requiem Brahms first considered writing a Requiem Mass after the death of his close friend Robert Schumann, but was only catapulted into its composition a decade later after the death of his mother caused him inconsolable grief. He completed his tribute to her four years later with a mass unlike any conventional Requiem. Freephone Box Office 0800 652 6717
This German Requiem sets sections of Luther’s translation of the Bible, dwelling far more on the hope of the resurrection than on the fear of Judgement Day. The first movement, ‘Blessed are they that mourn’, consoles those that remain on Earth with achingly beautiful suspensions from the chorus; the work moves through divinely beautiful music to the dramatic highlight of Brahms’s tone-painting of the resurrection of the dead. Yet the work ends back on an earthly level, a reminder that we cannot know what awaits us. This series is supported by The Meyer Foundation
6pm Pre-concert recital, Royal Festival Hall Recital by violinist Ben Baker, award-winner of the Martin Musical Scholarship Fund. FREE admission 12