symphonyconcert07

By juxtaposing outstanding classical-romantic repertoire with masterpieces of contemporary music, François-Xavier Roth wants to “open our ears for what music can be overall, how it can be understood.” Thus, all three works on this concert ostensibly tell stories. But music, as Beethoven professed about his “Pastorale”, is always “more an expression of feeling than a painting”. In his sixth symphony, the composer of the Viennese classical era sympathises with the city dweller stepping outside into open nature, and in the “Leonore” Overture inflates the heroic act of liberation of the female protagonist of his opera “Fidelio” to a vision of freedom, equality and fraternity. In his violin concerto “Seven” Peter Eötvös, Hungarian composer born in 1944, sets up an instrumental requiem to the seven astronauts who, in the Columbia disaster of 2003, “lost their lives while exploring space in fulfilment of a fundamental dream of mankind”. The soloist is Akiko Suwanai, youngest winner ever of the International Tschaikowski Competition in 1990. She premiered “Seven” in 2007 in Lucerne and has since performed it in Berlin, Budapest, London and Tokio as well.