ConcertPulse
Jacquot conducts Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto
Barbican Centre, Barbican Hall (London)
Grand passions and big tunes from Mendelssohn, Korngold and Augusta Holmès, as conductor Marie Jacquot makes her debut with the BBC Symphony Orchestra.
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Grand passions and big tunes from Mendelssohn, Korngold and Augusta Holmès, as conductor Marie Jacquot makes her debut with the BBC Symphony Orchestra.
Between Trees was the international breakthrough for the composer Kristine Tjøgersen (b. 1982) from Oslo. The Norwegian Radio Orchestra premiered the orchestral piece and was selected as “most outstanding work” at the prestigious award ceremony International Rostrum of Composers. Among the trees in the forest, “it teems with roots connected in a network of fungal threads,” the composer says. “These threads connect trees and plants so that they can communicate - like the forest’s own internet.” The piece is rich in unusual instrument sounds and techniques. She continues: “Fungal threads grow in pulses, so there is a rhythmically pulsating life unfolding beneath our feet. The opening is therefore buoyant and airy, like communicating trees. We then move over the ground, and hear flapping wings and various birds.”When the Russian Revolution was a fact in 1917, Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953) left the eye of the storm, Petrograd (today’s St. Petersburg), and traveled to the far east, with a steam boat on the rivers Volga and kama towards the Ural Mountains. In these calm surroundings, he wrote his most famous work. There is little in the Violin Concerto No. 1 in D Major that bears witness to the troubled times - perhaps excluding the wild second movement. The first and third movement contains some of Prokofiev’s most dreamy, romantic music, and some of his most memorable melodies.“I gave everything to it I was able to give. What I have accomplished here, I will never achieve again,” Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921) said about his Symphony No. 3 in C minor, the “Organ Symphony”, which premiered in London in 1886. This would be his last symphony and one of his most famous pieces.After growing up as a child prodigy on the piano, Saint-Saëns got the most prestigious organist job in France, at the La Madeleine church in Paris. The composer Franz Liszt heard him play there and called him “the world’s best organist”. Symphony No. 3 culminates in a powerful ending with piano and organ.
The WDR Symphony Orchestra's "Happy Hour" presents Russian contrasts: Anatoly Lyadov's refined soundscape "The Enchanted Lake," depicting cold, fantastical nature, followed by Igor Stravinsky's "Petrushka," a burlesque plunging into the vibrant life of a Russian fair, featuring mysteriously awakened puppets. Marie Jacquot, recently elected chief conductor from 2026/2027, leads the orchestra.
Less often than its high-pitched sibling, the viola emerges from the depths of the orchestra into the spotlight. William Walton's concerto gives it a grand stage. Its warm tone intertwines with a colorful orchestral part, also present in Liadov's shimmering "Enchanted Lake" and Stravinsky's ballet "Petrushka". Marie Jacquot, designated chief conductor of the WDR Symphony Orchestra, brings these fairytale sounds to life.
We admire stars because they are talented, beautiful, strong, awe-inspiring. We love them when they show their weaknesses. As Midori did. She was a child prodigy before whom Leonard Bernstein fell to his knees in awe. After a stunning career, she gave an account of her mother, who was consumed by ambition, in her 2004 German autobiography ›Einfach Midori’‹ as well as on her teachers and her addictions. She keeps returning after retiring from the stage, this time with Dvořák‘s only violin concerto. She will show that she’s still on fire.