NOSPR / Alsop / Kanneh-Mason / From Rococo to Modernity - NOSPR

The central place in the programme is occupied by Haydn’s two cello concertos – works that are alike in many respects and yet strikingly different. The first concerto (1765) delights with its elegant virtuosity: this is music that gracefully tests the limits of cello technique and seems to say to the soloist, ‘Let us see if you can do this.’ Listening to the second work (1783), one may feel that its melodic ideas appear more noble than the previous one, its sound is more delicate, and its form – more refined. Although the technical difficulties of both works are comparable, the Concerto in D major gives a noticeably more reflective, almost dreamlike air.

The concert programme is set in the frame of two works that appear to occupy opposite ends of the musical spectrum, despite having been written scarcely forty years apart. The Tragic Overture (1880), in Brahms’s own words, was meant ‘to make one weep’, just as its predecessor, the Academic Festival Overture, had been ‘to make one laugh’. Though the Tragic Overture has no explicit programme, it undoubtedly offers a meditation on the irrevocability of fate and the futility of resisting one’s destiny. In turn, Bartók’s The Miraculous Mandarin (1924) tells the unsettling story of a young woman compelled by a gang of ruffians to lure victims, one of whom proves remarkably resistant to violence and death alike. Yet the plot is perhaps less important here than the extraordinary sonic portrait of the modern city. The ballet’s première caused a scandal because of its subject matter, but the score itself remains every bit as provocative – it dazzles with colours, propels itself through passages of rhythmic frenzy, piles up dissonances, and startles in its extremes of dynamics. Without compromise, it reveals the anxiety and brutality of the modern age.

Piotr Matwiejczuk (Polskie Radio)

Concert duration (intermission included): approximately 110 minutes

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