Concert Pulse
Next month
In Warszawa
In Warszawa
Symphonic Concert
Filharmonia Narodowa, Concert Hall (Warszawa)
Jacek Brzoznowski, photo: opera.poznan.pl Due to reasons beyond the Warsaw Philharmonic, there has been a change of conductor for the subscription concerts on 4 and 5 April 2025. Instead of Antonello Manacorda, the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra will be conducted by Jacek Brzoznowski, who is acting as Assistant Conductor for the current season. The programme of the concerts remains unchanged. Beethoven seems to have ‘commissioned’ his Symphony No. 1 in C major from himself. The ambition to tackle a form that the Romantic aesthetic revolution would soon be treating as a laboratory for absolute music would have suited the Viennese Classic’s character. The increasingly prominent 30-year-old composer dedicated the completed work, on which he worked meticulously for many years, to Gottfried van Swieten, the protector of Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. It was the achievements of those composers, kindly disposed towards the young Beethoven, with whose output he would hardly have dared to vie at the time, that served as the starting point for his supremely successful debut symphony. The Symphony No. 1 by the twentieth-century classic Dmitry Shostakovich was his diploma piece in the composition class of the Leningrad Conservatory, from which he graduated at the age of 19. Characterised by the composer’s typical play of edgy motifs, march-like rhythms and clear textures, this work soon ventured beyond the university walls, bringing its young composer international acclaim. Subsequent anniversaries of the symphony’s first performance at the Leningrad Philharmonic in 1926 were later celebrated by Shostakovich for the rest of his life, while that famous institution, remembering the premieres of his other works, later repaid the favour by adopting Shostakovich as its patron.
