Beethoven Piano Festival - The Concertos
Friday April 24, 2009 8:00PM
Saturday April 25, 2009 8:00PM
Description:
"Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy, it is the wine of a new procreation, and I am Bacchus who presses out this glorious wine for men and makes them drunk with the spirit."
- Ludwig van Beethoven
Canadian pianist Louis Lortie joins Stefan Sanderling in an exploration of Ludwig van Beethoven’s five piano concerti.
Having burst onto the Viennese musical scene as a pianist of formidable talents, Beethoven began penning opportunities to put himself in front of an orchestra from the age of twenty-five. The first and second concerti (the second was actually sketched before the first) display the influence of Mozart. With the third concerto, a sense of muscularity and power emerges that characterizes many of the master’s middle period works. The fourth and fifth concerti fully explore the dramatic relationship between the orchestra and the piano that has made them audience favorites.
Points of interest:
· More than any other week this season, the spotlight will shine on the Toledo Symphony’s newest instrument, a 2008 concert Steinway. Principal conductor Stefan Sanderling, along with pianist and frequent Toledo Symphony guest Ignat Solzhenitsyn, chose the instrument to complement the Peristyle’s unique acoustic profile.
· If you want to hear Louis Lortie play Beethoven, his website, louislortie.com, has him performing – not one of the five concerti, but Liszt’s transcription of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony! Lortie also comments on the difference between recording Beethoven live, and in the studio.
· Whet your appetite for Beethoven by listening to Arnaldo Cohen’s recital of four Beethoven piano sonatas, including the Waldstein and the Pathéthique, on April 19. Cohen, a Brazilian-born pianist who now teaches at Indiana University in Bloomington, combines breathtaking virtuosity with musical authority and a rich, romantic sound palette.
· In the “loses something in translation” department: when Beethoven first arrived in Vienna, he played for Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Suitably impressed, Mozart remarked to a friend, “Watch out for this young man, for he will make a great noise in the world some day.”
Program:
Friday April 24
Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat Major 28'
Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 3 in C Minor 34'
INTERMISSION
Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 4 in G Major 34'
WGTE - FM 91 broadcasts the Toledo Symphony on FM 91 In Concert through the generosity of the Edward H. Schmidt Musical Arts Fund. Tonight's concert will be broadcast Thursday, October 1, 2009 at 8 p.m.
Saturday April 25
Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 1 in C Major 36'
INTERMISSION
Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat Major
"Emperor" 38'
WGTE - FM 91 broadcasts the Toledo Symphony on FM 91 In Concert through the generosity of the Edward H. Schmidt Musical Arts Fund. Tonight's concert will be broadcast Thursday, October 8, 2009 at 8 p.m.
