SUMMARY

This evening’s concert features two overtures and two concertos: all among the most popular of their types, and connected to each other in numerous ways. In the first part, we will hear the most famous works of two composers who both worked in cities in Saxony in the first half of the 19th century. Carl Maria von Weber served as music director in Dresden, and Felix Mendelssohn in Leipzig. The former’s Der Freischütz is generally acknowledged as the first German Romantic opera, with a magic spell at its centre. In league with dark forces, Caspar incites Max, who is fighting to retain both the girl he loves and his position as second assistant forester, to achieve his goal of winning a shooting contest by cheating, but without telling him that the magic bullet will be steered by Satan. The young man is finally saved from downfall and damnation by a mysterious hermit. In the overture, the distinguishing themes of the opera (fear, love and passion) are interconnected in such a masterful fashion that it can hold its own as an independent orchestral work, as a concise summary of the story and as a symphonic poem. Mendelssohn’s enchanting and eternally beautiful Violin Concerto in E minor speaks for itself with its soaring melodies; its third, wittily virtuosic movement is akin to the fairy music from the overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The young violinist, János Mátyás Stark has been studying in Weimar since 2016 and has successfully participated in competitions both in Hungary and abroad as a soloist, chamber musician and composer. After the intermission, we will hear two masterpieces from the history of Russian music. Born in 1833 as the illegitimate child of a Georgian prince and also recognised as a professor of chemistry and an internationally renowned researcher of aldehydes, Alexander Borodin considered Prince Igor, his sole opera, to be his masterpiece. However, he never found time to finish it during his short and eventful life, and it would only be presented after his death. The overture condenses the main melodies of the story, which deals with the military campaign waged by a 12th-century Russian prince against the Polovtsians, in Borodin’s own musical language, one that abounds in original melodies, harmonies and gestures. Although this work had a pivotal impact on Sergei Prokofiev when he saw it performed in Moscow at the age of eight, the composer, who died seventy years ago, never attempted to incorporate the characteristic features of Russian music into his works. Instead, his Piano Concerto No. 3, his most popular one, is – as is typical for him – a sweepingly powerful work full of characters and timbres, with an incredibly difficult piano part, which on this occasion will be undertaken by Tamta Magradze. The young Georgian pianist won the audience prize at the Utrecht Liszt Competition held in 2020 and has performed in many famous concert venues around Europe, working with such famed musicians as Leslie Howard and Elisso Virsaladze.