Programme

Carl Maria von Weber
Euryanthe. Overture

Ludwig van Beethoven
Concerto for piano and orchestra No. 2 in B flat major, op. 19

Interval

Dmitri Shostakovich
Symphony No. 10 E minor, op. 93

Mariss Jansons, Conductor

Rudolf Buchbinder, Piano

Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks

Mariss Jansons will conduct the monumental Tenth Symphony by Dmitri Shostakovich, and we await his mature reading with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra with bated breath! Written a few months after the death of Stalin in 1953, this bleak masterpiece is a stocktaking with the dictator and the régime of terror that caused the composer so much suffering. Later he even suggested that the aggressive scherzo is a mugshot of Stalin himself. Maestro Jansons can summon up all his experience with Shostakovich in this autobiographical confession, which only toward the end abandons its underlying hue of brooding tragedy. Preceding the symphony is a reunion with the Austrian pianist Rudolf Buchbinder, a specialist in the Viennese classical period. This time he will play Beethoven’s Second Piano Concerto, a work that shows the composer on his exciting path from Mozartian lightness to his own expressivity. And the concert will open with a piece whose brilliant verve makes it a perfect entrée: the overture to Carl Maria von Weber’s romantic opera Euryanthe.