Ticket prices: 60 PLN standard / 40 PLN concession
Ticket prices: 60 PLN standard / 40 PLN concession
Yamen Saadi violin (concertmaster of the Vienna Philharmonic)
Avri Levitan viola
Sinfonia Varsovia
Martin Rajna conductor (principal conductor of the Hungarian State Opera in Budapest)
Carl Maria von Weber Der Freischütz Overture [10’]
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Sinfonia Concertante in E-flat major for violin, viola and orchestra K.364/320d [30’]
I. Allegro maestoso
II. Andante
III. Presto
intermission [15’]
Béla Bartók Concerto for Orchestra BB.123 [36’]
I. Introduzione: Andante non troppo – Allegro vivace
II. Giuoco delle coppie: Allegretto scherzando
III. Elegia: Andante non troppo
IV. Intermezzo interrotto: Allegretto
V. Finale: Pesante – Presto
The concert programme features two landmark works of a concertante character: the Sinfonia concertante and the Concerto for Orchestra. Mozart’s Symphony in E-flat major is a hybrid of a solo concerto (in this case, for two soloists!) and a symphony. Written after the composer’s final extended stay in Paris in 1778, it stands as a testament to the freedom, inspiration and joy that travel can offer. Sometimes regarded as Mozart’s sixth (and finest) violin concerto, the work also features a solo viola part of equal importance to that of the violin. At that stage in music history, no one had done as much for the viola as Mozart: he often played the instrument himself, created the string quintet format with an additional viola, and never made it – or its players – the butt of a joke (though he was famously less forgiving toward the flute and the horn).
In the second concertante work of the evening, Bartók turns the orchestra into a virtuoso soloist. The Concerto for Orchestra is one of those legendary works of musical humanism whose scope – shaped by both the circumstances of its creation and its artistic merit – transcends ordinary measure. Bartók – weakened by undiagnosed leukaemia, unassimilated as an émigré in New York, and a refugee from war-torn Europe struggling to survive financially – wrote the piece in less than two months in 1943. This large-scale work – remarkable also for its size and orchestration – takes the unusual form of five movements. It traces an emotional arc – from the starkness of the first movement, through the elegiac “night music” of the central section, to the gradual affirmation of life in the finale. The final movement is preceded by a complex fugue that showcases the orchestra’s virtuosity. This narrative is punctuated by two contrasting episodes – a playful display of paired instruments in the second movement, and an ethereal intermezzo in the fourth.
