ConcertPulse
Symphoniker Hamburg / Mischa Maisky / Han-Na Chang
Elbphilharmonie, Großer Saal (Hamburg)
The programme opens with Richard Strauss’s »Don Juan«, a tone poem full of drama and passion. The work is based on Nikolaus Lenau’s »Don Juans Ende« of 1844. In it, Lenau created a hero who, as a free-thinking individual, rises above the decadence and prudery of society. Searching for the ideal woman, he is driven by an insatiable desire from one woman to the next. 40 years later, the figure of Don Juan – precisely because of these qualities – became for Strauss a representative of the modern artist, and thereby an opponent of intellectual hardening. That work is followed by Ernest Bloch’s Schelomo – a homage to the Old Testament characterised by an extraordinary musical beauty and a deeply moving solo voice part. The highlight of the evening is Sergei Prokofiev’s impressive Fifth Symphony. The work demonstrates Prokofiev’s profound understanding of the human drama and the human soul. »The Fifth Symphony embodies his complete inner maturity,« writes Sviatoslav Richter, who was there for the work’s noteworthy Moscow premiere on 13 January 1945, which Prokofiev conducted. »He looks down from a height at his life and at everything that has been. There is something Olympic in that.«