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In 1982, Rafael Kubelík recorded Dvořák’s Slavonic Dances with the BRSO in Munich’s Herkulessaal. This is one of the reasons that this concert serves as Sir Simon Rattle’s homage to the former chief conductor. It begins with the colorful and somewhat gentler second series of Dvořák’s folk-inspired composition, in which melancholy and poetic nuances mingle with the world of exuberant dance. Violist Timothy Ridout then makes his BRSO debut in the extensively lyrical passages of Martinů’s Rhapsody-Concerto. And finally, the brass gets has a chance to shine: nine trumpets (sounding as if there were at least ninety) dominate Janáček’s Sinfonietta – a work that would have surely become popular even without its famous celebratory fanfare. But it wouldn’t take your breath away and have such an overwhelming impact otherwise.
In 1982, Rafael Kubelík recorded Dvořák’s Slavonic Dances with the BRSO in Munich’s Herkulessaal. This is one of the reasons that this concert serves as Sir Simon Rattle’s homage to the former chief conductor. It begins with the colorful and somewhat gentler second series of Dvořák’s folk-inspired composition, in which melancholy and poetic nuances mingle with the world of exuberant dance. Violist Timothy Ridout then makes his BRSO debut in the extensively lyrical passages of Martinů’s Rhapsody-Concerto. And finally, the brass gets has a chance to shine: nine trumpets (sounding as if there were at least ninety) dominate Janáček’s Sinfonietta – a work that would have surely become popular even without its famous celebratory fanfare. But it wouldn’t take your breath away and have such an overwhelming impact otherwise.
A programme with three works requiring solo singers is certainly something special – so that Frank Peter Zimmermann has brought along two pieces never heard before in the concerts of the BRSO: Bartók’s roughly ten-minute Rhapsody No. 2 for violin and orchestra (1928) and Martinů’s Suite concertante (1944), a four-movement violin concerto in everything but name. Both works thrive on the tension between original eastern European folk melodies, modern sonic garb and the unique individual styles of their respective creators. A folk inflection of a quite different kind depicts the “heavenly joys” that soprano Anna Lucia Richter invokes in the final movement of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony. But the childlike naivety of this idyll openly displays its fractures, and perhaps no Mahler symphony is as enigmatic as his purportedly “simple” Fourth. Standing at the rostrum is the young Finnish conductor Klaus Mäkelä, now in his second appearance with the BRSO following his début of February 2020.
A programme with three works requiring solo singers is certainly something special – so that Frank Peter Zimmermann has brought along two pieces never heard before in the concerts of the BRSO: Bartók’s roughly ten-minute Rhapsody No. 2 for violin and orchestra (1928) and Martinů’s Suite concertante (1944), a four-movement violin concerto in everything but name. Both works thrive on the tension between original eastern European folk melodies, modern sonic garb and the unique individual styles of their respective creators. A folk inflection of a quite different kind depicts the “heavenly joys” that soprano Anna Lucia Richter invokes in the final movement of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony. But the childlike naivety of this idyll openly displays its fractures, and perhaps no Mahler symphony is as enigmatic as his purportedly “simple” Fourth. Standing at the rostrum is the young Finnish conductor Klaus Mäkelä, now in his second appearance with the BRSO following his début of February 2020.