NOSPR / Varga / Kim / Müller-Schott / Fire and Crystal - NOSPR

The Symphony in F minor (in Haydn’s times, the key associated with lamentation, profound melancholy, mournful sighs, and a longing for the grave) stands among the supreme achievements of the First Viennese Classic’s ‘Sturm und Drang’ (‘Storm and Stress’) period. Rhetorical musical devices derived from Passion settings are woven here with a dramatic and intensely personal voice that seems to foreshadow Beethoven. In our case, however, the programme offers not a continuation of this trajectory, but a contrast. Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante in E-flat major (1778) for four wind instruments represents the very essence of the style in which the composer created his ‘public’ works: music of noble simplicity, refined in detail, richly melodic, formally impeccable, and radiant with that particular beauty which ultimately eludes description. After the interval, another contrast presents itself. Brahms’s Double Concerto (1887), his final symphonic work, was composed as a gesture of reconciliation towards Joseph Joachim after a painful rupture in their friendship. Here, the violin and cello engage in a dialogue so intimate that they appear to become a single eight-stringed instrument. The energetic finale bears unmistakable traces of the Hungarian style, reflecting the enormous popularity of the composer’s Hungarian Dances. In the Double – as Bernstein put it – Brahms combines emotional turbulence with the strictest formal discipline, which Borges described even more succinctly as ‘fire and crystal’.

Piotr Matwiejczuk (Polskie Radio)

Concert duration (intermission included): approximately 110 minutes

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