NOSPR / Finnegan Downie Dear / Saleem Abboud Ashkar - NOSPR

A hundred years separate Beethoven’s Fifth Piano Concerto from Mahler’s Tenth Symphony. The ‘Emperor’ is the pinnacle in the piano output of the youngest of the Viennese Classics – his final concerto. The ‘Unfinished’ is the only movement which Mahler managed to prepare in its orchestral form; the rest remained in various stages, work on which was ended by the composer’s death. Awareness of that circumstance is the principal emotion of the Tenth. The Concerto, meanwhile, is a virtuosic showstopper (as already signalled by the cadenza in the introduction) full of heroic accents. Beethoven and Mahler look towards the music of future epochs: the expression of the Concerto is strongly Romantic, and the Symphony is the effect of Mahler’s interest in the latest techniques, associated with the output of the impressionists. Today’s encounter represents a marvellous opportunity to compare the worlds of the Adagio movements, which have so much in common, but sound so different.

[Piotr Mika, translated by John Comber]

Duration of the concert: approx. 80 minutes