Programme

Witold Lutosławski
Symphonie Nr. 1

Karol Szymanowski
Concerto for violin and orchestra No. 1, op. 35

Interval

Sergei Rachmaninoff
Symphonische Tänze op.45

Lorenzo Viotti, Conductor

Lisa Batiashvili, Violin

Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks

Please note

We are thankful that Lorenzo Viotti will conduct our concerts planned for May 14 and 15, 2020. Please note the associated program change.

Karol Szymanowski’s First Violin Concerto, with star violinist Lisa Batiashvili, forms the mysterious and poetic centrepiece of this concert, which was originally planned with our late principal conductor Mariss Jansons. Now Lorenzo Viotti, a genuine ‘rising star’ on the conductors’ firmament, has taken charge and will give his début with the BRSO. He has programmed the concerto in a field of tension created by two works of the 1940s: Witold Lutosławski’s First Symphony and Sergey Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances. Both works, with their terse rhythms, energetic drive and melancholy interludes, reflect the world-historical trauma of the Second World War and its consequences. In contrast the Szymanowski concerto, composed 20 years earlier, evokes a distant fairy-tale world inspired by May Night, a lyric poem by Tadeusz Miciński.