Zubin Mehta & Seong-Jin Cho

Programme

Sergei Rachmaninoff
Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor, op. 30

Interval

Richard Strauss
»Also sprach Zarathustra«, Op. 30, TrV 176

Zubin Mehta, Conductor

Seong-Jin Cho, Piano

Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks

about the programme

“Rach 3”: thus the name often lovingly bestowed on Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto. Composed in 1909 for his first American tour, it has always languished somewhat in the shadow of his popular Second Piano Concerto. Yet this very fact reflects its special charisma: it is the longest of Rachmaninoff’s four concertos, is said to contain the greatest number of piano notes per second, and poses the greatest challenges to the soloist’s technique. But its virtuosity is not superficial and bombastic; time and again it is pervaded by gentle hues. The BRSO is delighted to rejoin the Korean pianist Seong-Jin Cho, who stepped in for Lang Lang at a benefit concert in 2018 and has long numbered among the world’s élite. Heading the orchestra is Zubin Mehta, with whom the BRSO has developed a special bond in recent years. In the first of four successive programmes he will conduct Strauss’s Thus Spake Zarathustra, whose famous “Sunrise” fanfare and elegiac mood have made it one of the most popular of his tone-poems.