NOSPR / Lawrence Foster / Karol Mossakowski - NOSPR

The NOSPR’s magnificent new organ affords us an opportunity to hear the work of Thierry Escaich, a continuator of the French organ tradition. His compositions dazzle with their colours and rivet listeners to their seats with their monumental expression. Escaich is an organ virtuoso and erudite musician who draws on the past, as exemplified in his Quatre visages du temps. The music of Brahms, which recurs in concerts led by maestro Lawrence Foster, will sound more static, although his Academic Overture is a quite ironic and humorous compilation of student tunes. This work expresses the composer’s gratitude to the University of Wrocław, which in 1880 bestowed on Brahms an honorary doctorate in philosophy. And the Fourth Symphony? Well, it’s a masterpiece. According to the famous critic of the day, Eduard Hanslick, ‘it is like a dark well; the longer we look into it, the more brightly the stars shine back’.

[Adam Suprynowicz, translated by John Comber]

Duration of the concert (including break): approx. 110 minutes