symphony concert06

Virtuoso, bold and enigmatically tongue-in-cheek in equal measure: that’s Igor Strawinsky’s violin concerto from 1931, which the composer purportedly began to compose in a Paris restaurant, sketching a stretched-out chord for his soloist on a napkin and asking him whether he would be able to play it. He could, and the chord became the ‘passport’ to the concerto for Strawinsky – and at the same time a free ticket for excursions into the past. The ‘Concerto in D’ plays with the Baroque spirit and gestures, yet at the same time uses modern harmonies and rhythms as a ‘dialogue with history’. The seemingly familiar sounds so excitingly new. That could also be said about Anton Webern’s ‘Passacaglia’, whose underlying concept goes back to the Baroque era. But what a highly expressive tone, what emphasis and energy define these variations, which Webern composed in 1908 as his first work after studying with Arnold Schönberg for four years! The prevailing mood of Brahms’s 2nd Symphony, with which Francois-Xavier Roth continues to grapple with Brahms, is by contrast light-hearted, relaxed and gracious. His symphony “shines”, as Eduard Hanslick observed in his review of the premiere, “like the sun, warming aficionados and amateurs alike; it belongs to everyone who longs for good music.” As the violin soloist, Vilde Frang promises moments of exhilarating intensity.

The concert is in behalf of the Academy of the Gürzenich-Orchestra Cologne.