The Barenboim Project 2015
‘Truly visionary’ (The Guardian on Daniel Barenboim)
Cover image ©Monika Rittershaus Above©Karen Robinson
The Barenboim Project 2015 Daniel Barenboim returns to Royal Festival Hall during the 2014/15 season both as a piano soloist and as a conductor. Together, these performances form The Barenboim Project 2015. Daniel Barenboim’s special relationship with Southbank Centre goes back to 1956 when he made his London debut here at the age of 14. Since then he has been a much-loved and regular visitor. Both his 2008 sell-out cycle of Beethoven Piano Sonatas and the Beethoven and Schoenberg concerts in 2010 at Royal Festival Hall were major cultural events, attended by thousands of devoted music lovers who listened with rapt concentration. As part of The Barenboim Project 2015, Barenboim takes to the piano in Royal Festival Hall to perform a cycle of Schubert piano sonatas over four recitals. Schubert’s piano sonatas are some of his most intimate and moving musical statements. The poignant last three sonatas are among the major masterpieces of Schubert’s extraordinary final year before his death at the age of 31; but all of the sonatas display Schubert’s unique ability to express simultaneously the bitter and the sweet – the darkest of areas of the human psyche and the most simple, touching optimism. With Staatskapelle Berlin – an orchestra described as ‘one of the finest in the world’ by Barry Millington in the London Evening Standard – Barenboim also performs two concerts as conductor with star soloists Martha Argerich and Lisa Batiashvili.
Gillian Moore MBE Head of Classical Music, Southbank Centre
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‘The Berlin Staatskapelle... just can’t put a finger wrong’ (The Independent)
© David Levene
Daniel Barenboim & Staatskapelle Berlin Monday 20 April 2015
Daniel Barenboim conductor Martha Argerich piano
Royal Festival Hall, 7.30pm Premium seats £85 £65, £45, £28, £15 Transaction fees may apply*
Beethoven Piano Concerto No.1 Strauss Ein Heldenleben Barenboim applies his extraordinary musicianship to Richard Strauss’ orchestral tone poem Ein Heldenleben. This soaring, colourful depiction of ‘a hero’s life’, comes complete with blazing trumpets, angular squeaks and snarls to suggest the pettiness of his adversaries, and tender melodies to conjure the hero’s companion. Martha Argerich – a pianist who has been described as ‘both a poet and a tiger on stage’ – performs a much-loved staple of her repertoire, Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No.1.
Martha Argerich © Adriano Heitman tickets 0844 847 9934 southbankcentre.co.uk/barenboim
Daniel Barenboim & Staatskapelle Berlin Tuesday 21 April 2015
Daniel Barenboim conductor Lisa Batiashvili violin Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto Elgar Symphony No.2 A second concert by Daniel Barenboim at his London home, performing with Lisa Batiashvili and the Staatskapelle Berlin. Consistently voted an audience favourite, Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto – a deeply felt work full of melodic vitality, soul and virtuosic brilliance – is performed by Batiashvili, described by The Times as ‘the complete musician’. Elgar’s Symphony No.2 – a full-bodied Romantic journey for the orchestra – was described by the composer as ‘the passionate pilgrimage of the soul’. It moves from the poignant first movement through a slowmoving funeral march and a playful dance before concluding with a moving finale of great warmth.
© Karen Robinson
Royal Festival Hall, 7.30pm Premium seats £85 £65, £45, £28, £15 Transaction fees may apply*
Lisa Batiashvili
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Barenboim Plays Schubert Piano Sonatas
‘Barenboim takes the listener into another realm’ (Evening Standard) Presented in association with Askonas Holt ©Monika Rittershaus tickets 0844 847 9934 southbankcentre.co.uk/barenboim
Wednesday 27 May 2015
Sunday 31 May 2015
Schubert Sonata in A minor, D.537 Sonata in A, D.664 Sonata in A, D.959
Schubert Sonata in E flat, D.568 Sonata in A minor, D.784 Sonata in D, D.850
Daniel Barenboim opens his Schubert cycle with three works exploring startlingly different moods.
Despite a baffling neglect of Schubert’s music during his lifetime, he continued to pour forth glorious music, including D.568. This reworking of an earlier sonata gives the original more time to blossom naturally and incorporates a delightful, skipping minuet along the way.
D.537 is the earliest sonata to have survived complete and finds the 20-year-old genius exploring the dark recesses of his creativity. In D.664, dedicated to the gifted and pretty daughter of a local ironmaster, it’s possible to sense behind its sublime lyrical contentment the anguished pain of unrequited love. Rarely has the major key felt so profoundly sad as in D.959, one of Schubert’s last completed works, which seems to encapsulate a lifetime’s experience – he was just 31 years of age. Royal Festival Hall, 7.30pm Premium seats £65 £50, £35, £20, £10 Transaction fees may apply*
The cries of despair that litter D.784 reflect Schubert’s state of mind at the time as he began receiving mercury treatment for the disease that eventually brought about his early demise. Two years later his fine spirits returned and his rejoicing can be sensed in D.850, a work of uncontainable exuberance and sparkling virtuosity. Royal Festival Hall, 3pm (please note start time) Premium seats £65 £50, £35, £20, £10 Transaction fees may apply*
Friday 29 May 2015
Tuesday 2 June 2015
Schubert Sonata in B, D.575 Sonata in G, D.894 Sonata in C minor, D.958
Schubert Sonata in A minor, D.845 Sonata in B flat, D.960
Schubert’s amazing ability to change mood and direction in an instant is especially potent in D.575. The sonata is tellingly cast in the emotionally ambivalent key of B major. Considered by Robert Schumann to be the ‘most perfect in form and conception’ of the sonatas, D.894 possesses a sense of wonderment and serenity. It brings to mind pianist Arthur Schnabel’s awestruck assessment of Schubert as ‘the composer closest to God’. In D.958, one encounters drama and power in a finale that the Chilean virtuoso Claudio Arrau described as a ‘ghost-dance, full of sadness, restlessness and anxiety.’ Royal Festival Hall, 7.30pm Premium seats £65 £50, £35, £20, £10 Transaction fees may apply*
Daniel Barenboim concludes the series with two towering masterworks. At times it feels as though the last of Schubert’s three sonatas in A minor (D.845) is staring over into the abyss – and little wonder, as the opening unison is borrowed from his song ‘The Gravedigger’s Homesickness’. The heart-rending phrases of Schubert’s final sonata, D.960, appear to carry the weight of the world on its prophetic shoulders – tragically he passed away less a month after signing off the manuscript. On his memorial stone, the great Romantic poet Franz Grillparzer reflected: ‘Music has here entombed a rich treasure, but even fairer hopes.’ Royal Festival Hall, 7.30pm Premium seats £65 £50, £35, £20, £10 Transaction fees may apply*
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