Known as a prominent interpreter of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s music, Boris Giltburg believes that the composer’s First Piano Concerto lacks nothing. “It has heart-aching yearning and nostalgia, lush, warm-summer-day-laziness, singular beauty, tender and loving.”
Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta is among Béla Bartók’s best-known works. Completed in 1936, the composition fascinates with its contrasts that make the music at once wild and controlled, calm and terrifying.
The fact that he was a Russian born in Russia inevitably influenced his character and his music, said Sergei Rachmaninov (1873–1943), yet he never tried to write deliberately nationalist music. On the contrary, he tended to distance himself from the latest trends – impressionism and expressionism – and stuck to the dominant 19th-century pan-European style, romanticism.
In 1900, Rachmaninov was only 17 when he wrote the opening movement of his first piano concerto, and only 18 when he finished the other two. In a letter dated 1917 he told a friend that he had rewritten it. “It is really good now. All the youthful freshness is there, and yet it plays itself so much more easily. And nobody pays any attention. When I tell them in America that I will play the First Concerto, they do not protest, but I can see by their faces that they would prefer the Second or Third.” His revisions of 1917 applied particularly to the points he felt were too like the popular Grieg concerto, but he also covered the first and last movements with red pen. The big cadenza in the first movement is the core of the whole concerto.
Béla Bartók (1881–1945) composed his four-movement Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta for the 10th anniversary concert of the Basel Chamber Orchestra. It would in time become a classic regarded by many as one of the most significant compositions of the 20th century. It is scored for two string groups, one on each side of the stage, plus harp, percussions, piano and celesta and incorporates melodic and rhythmic elements evocative of the folk music of Bartók’s native Hungary.
Many may, at this point, remember it from Stanley Kubrick’s film The Shining.
Analysts tend to stress the intellectual aspects of the work, its application of the Golden Section in the form, its symmetrical harmonic solutions and other finer points. Bartók himself usually spoke of it in totally analytical terms, yet once, while listening to it, he is alleged to have whispered to violinist André Gertler in the middle of the third movement, “Listen, now, this is the sea and the noise of the waves.” Many may, at this point, remember it from Stanley Kubrick’s film The Shining.
Yes, but only before or after the concert. During the concert we just want you to enjoy the music. This way you won’t disturb the musicians or other audience members.
Only the orchestra has a dress code. You can dress as you like.
You can give the ticket to a friend or donate it to a music student by calling 09-3102 2700 or sending an e-mail to helsinki.philharmonic@hel.fi by 3pm on the day of the concert.
