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The classical prelude is a symphony by Joseph Haydn, followed by Thomas Adès’ piano concerto, which has already been performed around 60 times since its premiere in 2019 – a remarkable amount for a contemporary work. Given the fame that the multi-talented British composer enjoys, this success is hardly surprising. A New York Times critic wrote about the premiere of the concerto: »As ever, the craft is astounding, the orchestration ceaselessly brilliant. The voice is wholly his own — dissonant, offbeat, whiplash, wry — even as it whispers to musics past. This breathless concerto comes across as zesty and accessible. But don’t be fooled. Just below the surface, the music sizzles. I can’t wait to hear it again.« The classical prelude is a symphony by Joseph Haydn, followed by Thomas Adès’ piano concerto, which has already been performed around 60 times since its premiere in 2019 – a remarkable amount for a contemporary work. Given the fame that the multi-talented British composer enjoys, this success is hardly surprising. A New York Times critic wrote about the premiere of the concerto: »As ever, the craft is astounding, the orchestration ceaselessly brilliant. The voice is wholly his own — dissonant, offbeat, whiplash, wry — even as it whispers to musics past. This breathless concerto comes across as zesty and accessible. But don’t be fooled. Just below the surface, the music sizzles. I can’t wait to hear it again.« Adès, whose music is full of musical echoes from baroque to jazz yet refuses to follow any dogmas, sets the tone for the second half of the concert featuring Leoš Janácek, whose musical language around a century ago was equally undogmatic. His rhapsody »Taras Bulba« sets Nikolai Gogol’s tragic tale of the same name about a father and his two sons to music. So vividly that a film inevitably unfolds in the mind’s eye of the listener. By way of a prelude, two miniatures pay tribute to Pierre Boulez as the spotlighted composer of the International Music Festival.
The chicken that seems to cluck through the first movement of Haydn's Paris Symphony No. 83 in the second theme was not sighted there by the composer himself but, as is so often the case, by posterity. But with Haydn's numerous symphonies, epithets are certainly helpful. With ‘La Poule’ from 1785, Joana Mallwitz continues her Haydn focus at the Konzerthausorchester, which spans several seasons. This is followed by a leap into the 20th century: Béla Bartók's Third Piano Concerto, interpreted by Igor Levit, touchingly demonstrates that shortly before his death in exile in the US in 1945, the seriously ill composer managed to free himself from the gloom of his final years and write a cheerful, luminous work for his wife, the pianist Ditta Pásztory. He was only unable to orchestrate the last 17 bars himself. The suite from Stravinsky's ballet ‘Petrushka’, which takes place at an early 19th century Russian fair among Punch and Judy puppets, forms the furious conclusion to the evening.
The chicken that seems to cluck through the first movement of Haydn's Paris Symphony No. 83 in the second theme was not sighted there by the composer himself but, as is so often the case, by posterity. But with Haydn's numerous symphonies, epithets are certainly helpful. With ‘La Poule’ from 1785, Joana Mallwitz continues her Haydn focus at the Konzerthausorchester, which spans several seasons. This is followed by a leap into the 20th century: Béla Bartók's Third Piano Concerto, interpreted by Igor Levit, touchingly demonstrates that shortly before his death in exile in the US in 1945, the seriously ill composer managed to free himself from the gloom of his final years and write a cheerful, luminous work for his wife, the pianist Ditta Pásztory. He was only unable to orchestrate the last 17 bars himself. The suite from Stravinsky's ballet ‘Petrushka’, which takes place at an early 19th century Russian fair among Punch and Judy puppets, forms the furious conclusion to the evening.